Comparison of temporal changes in urban settlements and land surface temperature in Rangpur and Gazipur Sadar, Bangladesh after the establishment of city corporation

Abstract

Land use land cover (LULC) and Land surface temperature (LST) dynamics are critical indicators of trends in human activities. LULC change explains human-environment interactions and is vital for sustainable development & natural resources management. Rapid urbanization causes permanent changes in land cover as well as altering the LST. City corporations established in Gazipur (2013) and Rangpur (2012) accelerated economic growth and urbanization. We aimed to investigate whether key administrative change is the primary factor accelerating drastic urbanization rather than historical development trends. We examined the areal extent of urban class and LST change from 2006 to 2020 throughout Gazipur and Rangpur Sadar Upazila using Landsat 5 & 8 imagery. Supervised classification (Maximum Likelihood Classification) and Plank equation were used to identify urban build-up and estimate LST. The rate of urbanization was 59.64% and 51.80% during the second epoch (2013–2020) compared to 12.40% and 5.50% in the first epoch (2006–2013). The LST increased throughout the whole region during the second epoch with a maximum of 31.1 °C and 26.6 °C in Gazipur and Rangpur Sadar Upazila, respectively, which is significantly higher than the first epoch. The overall accuracy for all images used in this study stand between 93.94% and 96.97%.