Abstract
For a reliable assessment of sustainability in big cities, it is imperative to evaluate urban ecosystem conditions and the environment of the cities undergoing economic growth. Urban green spaces are valuable sources of evapotranspiration, which is generated by trees and vegetation; these spaces mitigate urban heat islands in cities. Land surface temperature (LST) is closely related to the distribution of land-use and land-cover characteristics and can be used as an indicator of urban environment conditions and development. This study evaluates the patterns of LST distribution through time by employing the thermal spatial distribution signature procedure using thermal infrared data obtained from Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper. A set of 18 images, between 1985 and 2010, was used to study the urban environment during summer in 47 neighborhoods of Porto Alegre, Brazil. On a neighborhood scale, results show a non-linear inverse correlation (R² = 0.55) between vegetation index and LST. The overall average of the LST is 300.23 K (27.8 °C) with a standard deviation of 1.25 K and the maximum average difference of 2.83 K between neighborhoods. Results show that the Thermal Spatial Distribution Signature (TSDS) analysis can help multi-temporal studies for the evaluation of UHI through time.
Highlights
Owing to civilization in the 19th century, land use cover was strongly transformed without precedent, which is strongly related to the high acceleration of industrialization
We evaluate a specific approach for the identification of multi-temporal patterns of Land surface temperature (LST) distribution in the urban environment
The validation step, which compares the obtained results of thermal spatial distribution signature (TSDS) estimates with those obtained from EVI-2, for the evaluation of vegetation cover, indicated that the two estimates were in good agreement
Summary
Owing to civilization in the 19th century, land use cover was strongly transformed without precedent, which is strongly related to the high acceleration of industrialization. Excessive local demands on environmental systems have become global in scope [1]. There are a number of diverse definitions of urban sustainability, the core value of urban sustainability always lies in the balance of environmental, economic and social development [2,3]. The monitoring of local environmental problems and planning has been increasingly perceived as an institutional and governmental tool for introducing principles of sustainable development as well as for serving as urban sustainability indicators [2]. Environmental problems refer to any human-induced damage to the physical environment resulting from land use and land cover (LULC), estate pressure, inadequate waste management and unintended side effects caused by human activity in the urban environment
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