Assessment of land surface temperature and land cover variability during winter: A spatio-temporal analysis of Pabna municipality in Bangladesh

Abstract

Monitoring the change of land use and land cover (LULC) and land surface temperature (LST) at different spatio-temporal scales is vital for evaluating landscape dynamics and thermal environment. This study investigates the decadal change of LULC and winter LST on Pabna municipality over the period between 1990 and 2020 using Landsat images (TM, ETM+ and OLI). The study further explores LST distribution for different LULC classes and the explanatory power of various land surface indicators for change in LST. A supervised maximum likelihood classification (MLC) technique was used for LULC mapping of the study area. The results showed that built-up areas were increasing rapidly while water bodies, bare lands and vegetation decreased. The built-up area expanded by 358% between 1990 and 2020, with the occupied area rising from 1.44 km2 to 6.60 km2. To obtain reliable LST results, average values of LST obtained from multiple Landsat images for each year were used. The mean LST in the winter season has risen by 0.63 °C over the last 30 years. The variation in LST between separate days of the same year increased significantly, although the change in mean LST was small. Statistical analysis of land surface indicators revealed that NDVI, NDBI and NDBaI have significant explanatory power to describe LST scenarios. The explanatory power of NDBI and NDBaI to explain the rise of LST is increasing over time while the cooling capacity of NDVI is declining. LST had a moderate positive correlation with NDBI and NDBI and a weak negative correlation with NDVI.