Estimation of land surface temperature for Coimbatore District using Landsat imagery

Abstract

The impact of climate change is visually witnessed in the present environment by various natural disasters. This phenomenon of land surface temperature is one of the significant aspects to be estimated for the study of climate change. The increase in Land Surface Temperature (LST) may be due to ongoing developments in the field of urbanization and globalization. The objective of the study was to estimate the increase in the LST in relation to the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and assess the spatial variation in the LST due to land use/land cover change. The study utilized Landsat 8 data to assess the land-use changes and their relation with LST in one of the main urbanized cities, i.e. Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu, using Landsat imagery due to the availability of various land cover types by using the mathematical expressions in ARCMAP software. This study compares the LST between 2015 and 2020 to observe the change in the NDVI and LST over a period of 5 years in the Coimbatore district. There was an increase of 1°C in 5 years and the area of high LST had been increased comparatively. The maximum LST was found to be 73°C in 2015, which increased to 74°C in the year 2020 ;and the minimum LST was found to be 15°C in 2015, which increased to 19°C in the year 2020 depicting the ongoing change in the land use of the district. The study findings will help promulgate sustainable urban land-use policies and can be used for mitigating climate change.