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The land surface temperature (LST) pattern is regarded as one of the most important indicators of the environmental consequences of land use/land cover change. The possible contribution of land surface to the warming phenomenon is being investigated by scientists across the world. This research focuses on variations in surface temperature and urban heat islands (UHIs) over the course of two seasons, i.e., winter and summer. Using remotely sensed datasets and geospatial techniques, an attempt was made to analyze the spatiotemporal variation in urban heat islands (UHIs) and its association with LULC over Chandigarh from 2000 to 2020. The Enhanced Built-up and Bareness Index (EBBI), Dry Built-up Index (DBI), and Dry Bare-Soil Index (DBSI) were used to identify built-up areas in the city. The results revealed an increase of 10.08% in BA, whereas the vegetation decreased by 4.5% over the study period, which is in close agreement with the EBBI, DBI, and DBSI assessments. From 2000 to 2020, the UHI intensities increased steadily in both the summer and winter seasons. Dense built-up areas such as the industrial unit of the city possessed the highest UHIindex (>0.7) values.

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Amongst the various types of paddy transplanters; walk-behind-type transplanters are more economically viable as compared with riding-type paddy transplanters. But, it requires more human involvement because the operator has to walk behind the two-wheel walk-behind-type paddy transplanter in puddled field conditions up to about 10-22 km during a day-long period under high temperature and humid conditions. To reduce the workload of the operator, a wireless remote-controlled system has been developed to control the various hand control levers of walkbehind-type paddy transplanter through electric linear actuators and electronic control unit. The present study emphasizes the performance evaluation of the remote control system and optimizes the machine-field parameters. Response surface methodology was used with three levels of soil puddling settlement period (4, 26, and 48 h), three forward speeds (1.40, 1.85, and 2.30 km h −1 ) in two types of soils (light-textured and medium-textured). The response factors, that is, the effective field capacity (EFC) and field efficiency (FE) were found affected by forwarding speed, soil type, and soil puddling settlement period, but no significant effect was observed at the interaction level. The optimal value of soil puddling settlement period was 26 h at a forward speed of 2.0 km h −1 for light-textured soil, whereas for medium-textured soil, it was 30 h at 1.82 km h −1 . A total saving of up to 18.18% labor requirement was observed as required in the existing walk-behindtype paddy transplanter. The increase in EFC was observed up to 20%, resulting the net benefit per unit area and per year has been increased up to 6.59% and 15.86%, respectively. The overall results of the field evaluation showed that the remotecontrolled system for the two-wheel paddy transplanter would be feasible at optimized field and machine parameters.