Rapid urban expansion has profoundly impacted on urban biodiversity, ecosystem functions, regional climate change, and the quality of life. One of the ecological consequences of urban expansion is the Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon, which is formed when higher atmospheric and surface temperatures in urbanized areas are observed over the surrounding rural area. Urban thermal environment problems caused by UHI have some further impacts on energy consumption, human health and urban sustainable development. As a synthesis representation of urban environment effect, UHI is jointly determined by the physical properties of land surface and heat release by related socioeconomic activities. Within the urbanized area there are diverse landscape types, such as urban building landscape, road landscape, green space, water body, and so on. Among various urban landscape types, the thermal environment effect of water landscape is quite different. It is important to study how the water body might influence the urban thermal environment. The SPOT 5 and Landsat 7 ETM+ images are applied to derive the spatial pattern of urban water landscape and land surface temperature in Shanghai, and spatial analysis technique will be used to explore the thermal environment effect of water landscape. An intense urban heat island effect is identified in Shanghai City, with its center located on the west bank of Huangpu River. At the same time, a cold island effect is detected for the water landscape patches and corridors. Statistical significance is not found between area and perimeter of water patches (or river corridors) and their impact on local thermal environment.

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Chinese cities have grown rapidly and experienced drastic restructuring in the last three decades since the beginning of economic reforms. Both environmental degradation and economic inequality are considered the major negative outcomes of rapid urban expansion. Against the background of the World Expo 2010, this study uses socioeconomic statistics