Temporal and Spatial Variations of Urban Heat Island Effect in Jaipur City Using Satellite Data

Abstract

Indian cities are growing rapidly and that results in a wide variety of environmental stresses. In this article, an integrated approach that incorporates Satellite Data and GIS techniques in conjunction with socio-economic data has been used to assess urban environmental issues in Jaipur, the capital city of the Indian state of Rajasthan. The issues addressed in this paper include: changes in land use/land cover changes in surface temperatures based on data collected between 2001 and 2009, and the assessment of surface Urban Heat Island (UHI) both in temperature and vegetation. Least clouded day and night scenes of TERRA/MODIS acquired between 2001 and 2008 have been selected to generate Land Surface Temperature (LST) maps. UHI patterns are analyzed in association with urban vegetation cover, built up land, population density, and surface temperature derived from high-resolution satellite data. The results show that the city has been expanding very rapidly towards the South and South-West due to the presence of Aravalli hills in the Northern direction. The study shows that out of the total area, only 13.12 per cent under moderate potential zone and 0.97 per cent under high UHI potential zone, is located close to the walled city in core region.