Appraisal of Urbanization and Its Impacts on the Albedo and Climate Change of the Punjab-Pakistan: A Spatio-Temporal Analysis

Abstract

The research is aimed at evaluating the process of urbanization and it’s spatio-temporal impacts on albedo and the changing climate of the Punjab. Climate change in urban areas has
 become a public focal point, as urban development in our present-day environment is one of the mostcritical aspects of human activities. The shift in the reflective properties of the surface is one of theparticular climatic consequences of urbanization which most researchers have overlooked (Albedo).Changes in urbanized land surface properties resulted in a global, regional, and local changes inbiochemical cycles and environment. This analysis aims to identify the urban land use of the 1990-2018 study area (decadal) and evaluate Albedo and Climatic Variables' trends over the selected region.This study will provide a complete code of classification in Google Earth Engine for researchers. InGoogle Earth Engine, the classification technique was utilized to detect urban areas and barren landcover types by applying coding over four images of 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2018 of Punjab Province.The Albedo maps were created in the same way for the years 2000 and 2018. Climatic maps werecreated from 1990 to 2018 by applying the Inverse Distance Weighted method in a GIS system. Therehas been an apparent increase in the urban area of Punjab Province from 1990 to 2018. The urban areahas increased from 1183.5342 km2 to 8396.4618 km2 during the study period. Results from climaticmaps showed hotspots in the areas that have undergone urbanization. Overall, the accuracy of theclassification images was 81-88 percent, which was foremost to achieve the objectives of the research.