Spatial-temporal analysis of changes in land-cover and land surface temperature (LST) within Universiti Putra Malaysia campus area

Abstract

The urban forest is one of the typical vegetation-covered space in an urban area. The existence and development of the urban forest commonly found within the university campus site. The ecological and environmental characteristics in a university campus site usually resemble and similar to the urban area. The physical environment of the campus area is gradually changing due to development and improvement purposes, and it is impacting the land-cover on the surface. Changing the physical element of the surface will affect the absorption of the sun radiation, and further, it is changing the dynamic of the micro-climatic condition or temperature within the surrounding area. The primary focus of the research is to observe the impact of land-cover change on the land surface temperature (LST) within the campus area. Universiti Putra Malaysia is one of the largest campuses located in the urban area of Serdang district, state of Selangor. The dynamic changes in this site observed through multi-temporal Landsat 8 OLI-TIRS level 1 imageries. Datasets from 2013 to 2015 were collected to employ spatial-temporal analysis on land-cover changes, as well as the LST algorithm to monitor the surface temperature. The result shows that there was an increasing surface temperature during 2013-2015, the maximum LST in September 2015 was found at 32.17 °C, it is higher than the maximum LST in September 2013 (28.84 °C). The result shows that there was an increasing surface temperature during 2013-2015, which corresponds with the inclining built-up area. The research concluded that changes in land-cover would affect the spatial-temporal land surface temperature at University Putra Malaysia.