Abstract
One of the essential anthropogenic influences on urban climate is land-use/land-cover (LULC) change due to urbanization, which has a direct impact on land surface temperature (LST). However, LULC changes affect LST, and further, urban heat island (UHI) still needs to be investigated. In this study, we estimated changes in LULC from 1993 to 2018, its warming (positive) and cooling (negative) effect, and their contribution to relative LST (RLST) in the city of Islamabad using satellite remote-sensing data. The LULC was classified using a random forest (RF) classifier, and LST was retrieved by a standardized radiative transfer equation (RTE). Our results reveal that the impervious surfaces has increased by 11.9% on the cost of declining barren land, forest land, grass/agriculture land, and water bodies in the last 26 years. LULC conversion contributed warming effects such as forest land, water bodies, and grass/agriculture land transformed into impervious surfaces, inducing a warming contribution of 1.52 °C. In contrast, the replacement of barren land and impervious surfaces by forest land and water bodies may have a cooling contribution of −0.85 °C to RLST. Furthermore, based on the standardized scale (10%) of LULC changes, the conversion of forest land into impervious surfaces contributed 1% compared to back conversion by −0.2%. The positive contribution to UHI due to the transformation of a natural surface to the human-made surface was found higher than the negative (cooler) contribution due to continued anthropogenic activities. The information will be useful for urban managers and decision makers in land-use planning to control the soaring surface temperature for a comfortable living environment and sustainable cities.
Highlights
Human beings rather than natural forces are continuously involved in the exchange of energy from the earth’s surface to the atmosphere through land-use/land-cover (LULC) changes [1,2], which has a direct impact on Land Surface Temperature (LST)
A similar trend was found between LST and LULC changes
Besides global warming and climate change, the surface temperature of the city in 1993 was low due to the abundance of green space and low percentage of impervious surfaces scattered in the core area
Summary
Human beings rather than natural forces are continuously involved in the exchange of energy from the earth’s surface to the atmosphere through land-use/land-cover (LULC) changes [1,2], which has a direct impact on Land Surface Temperature (LST). Urbanization involves LULC transformations of replacing soil and vegetation cover by impervious surfaces, agricultural activities, commercial and industrial operations, and low-density buildings replaced by high-rise complex urban structure [5,6,7]. Urbanization induces natural land cover replaced with grey structures that modify the urban biophysical climate and alteration of LST [8]. Such transformation from natural surfaces to impervious surfaces has changed surface energy and radiation balance by increasing low heat transfer capacity [9]. A phenomenon known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect is developed due to the conversion of land surfaces, materials of the infrastructure, and heat release from anthropogenic activities [10]
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