Impact of spatiotemporal land-use and land-cover changes on surface urban heat islands in a semiarid region using Landsat data

Abstract

Many factors are involved in urban heat island development, such as lack of green spaces, improper choice of building materials, densification, and other human activities. The aim of this research was to quantify the effects of land-use/land-cover (LU/LC) changes on urban land surface temperature (LST) during a 25-year period (1993-2018) for the semiarid Shiraz City in southern Iran using Landsat data (TM, ETM + , and OLI/TIRS) and machine learning algorithms. Five main LU/LC classes, such as orchard, vegetation, bare surface, asphalt cover, and built-up areas, were identified using a support vector machine algorithm. Landsat images were used to retrieve normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalized difference built-up index (NDBI). The results showed that the mean LST over the entire study domain increased considerably between 1993 and 2018, due to urbanization, decrease of green areas, and increasing industrial areas. Built-up areas increased considerably by 25.8% from 80 to 100.6 km 2 between 1993 and 2018, while vegetation cover decreased dramatically by 69.3%. Mean LST increased from 38.4 to 40.2°C during the 25-year period with a significant increase of 3.9°C between 2013 and 2018. In addition, the Urban heat island Ratio Index (URI) displayed a substantial upward trend during the 25-year period.

Impact of Urban Land-Cover Changes on the Spatial-Temporal Land Surface Temperature in a Tropical City of Mexico

“…At local scales, the increase in urban infrastructure increases albedo, decreases evapotranspiration, and generates the UHI phenomenon [5,71,72], while at regional scale, forest cover keeps the temperature relatively constant, and the climatic variations could be associated with regional or global climatic events or phenomena (El Niño and the Southern Oscillation, or global climate change [73][74][75]). This is similar to other tropical cities as Beijing, Changchun, and Hangzhou, China [1,8,11], Cameron Highlands, Malaysia [76], or Shiraz, Iran [77]. In all cases, UHI phenomena are associated with the extension of the urban area, type of structures and material, density housing, and presence of areas with continuous vegetation within the city.…”

Understanding the Links between LULC Changes and SUHI in Cities: Insights from Two-Decadal Studies (2001–2020)

“…However, the benefit of vegetation has not been given sufficient attention. For example, the percentage of vegetation was found to have decreased from 6.3% to 1.9% over 25 years in Shiraz city, Iran [136]. At the same time, the mean LST of vegetation changed from 35.1 • C in 1993 to 39.5 • C in 2018, which proved that the cooling power of vegetation was affected by the total quantity.…”

Índices de (des) conforto humano em um município de clima semiárido

“…2020), mostraram que áreas com pouca cobertura vegetal, densamente urbanizadas e com alta impermeabilidade possuem uma resposta térmica mais elevada sendo, por tanto, necessárias medidas para reduzir o desconforto térmico em áreas urbanas com tais características. A medida mais eficaz para reduzir esses efeitos térmicos negativos é a expansão de espaços verdes no contexto urbano, sugerido, em alguns estudos, pelos próprios habitantes locais (Gomes;Caracristi, 2019;Maskooni et al, 2020).…”

“…Landsberg (1956) relatou que mesmo uma rua é capaz de produzir condições específicas de clima urbano. Essa característica é nitidamente observada à medida em que há áreas densamente construídas e pouco arborizadas (Shashua-Bar et al, 2010;Ting, 2012;Maskooni et al, 2020). A substituição gradual das áreas verdes por áreas residenciais e comerciais em diversas cidades do Brasil e do mundo vêm resultando num aumento significativo da temperatura do ar nas áreas urbanas (Correia et al 2019).…”