Land-Use/Land-Cover Changes and Its Contribution to Urban Heat Island: A Case Study of Islamabad, Pakistan

Abstract

One of the essential anthropogenic influences on urban climate is land-use/land-cover (LULC) change due to urbanization, which has a direct impact on land surface temperature (LST). However, LULC changes affect LST, and further, urban heat island (UHI) still needs to be investigated. In this study, we estimated changes in LULC from 1993 to 2018, its warming (positive) and cooling (negative) effect, and their contribution to relative LST (RLST) in the city of Islamabad using satellite remote-sensing data. The LULC was classified using a random forest (RF) classifier, and LST was retrieved by a standardized radiative transfer equation (RTE). Our results reveal that the impervious surfaces has increased by 11.9% on the cost of declining barren land, forest land, grass/agriculture land, and water bodies in the last 26 years. LULC conversion contributed warming effects such as forest land, water bodies, and grass/agriculture land transformed into impervious surfaces, inducing a warming contribution of 1.52 °C. In contrast, the replacement of barren land and impervious surfaces by forest land and water bodies may have a cooling contribution of −0.85 °C to RLST. Furthermore, based on the standardized scale (10%) of LULC changes, the conversion of forest land into impervious surfaces contributed 1% compared to back conversion by −0.2%. The positive contribution to UHI due to the transformation of a natural surface to the human-made surface was found higher than the negative (cooler) contribution due to continued anthropogenic activities. The information will be useful for urban managers and decision makers in land-use planning to control the soaring surface temperature for a comfortable living environment and sustainable cities.

Land use/land cover changes and their impact on land surface temperature using remote sensing technique in district Khanewal, Punjab Pakistan

“…Climatic and environmental changes negatively influenced the health of the crops with the passage of time in the following ways: variations in the rainfall (Kimuku & Ngigi, 2017), extreme heat stress, change in the land surface temperature (LST), and migration of the peoples from rural to urban areas (Hussain et al, 2020a;Mukherjee & Singh, 2020). The LST patterns provide helpful information about the environment and, therefore, help understand climate change (Cai et al, 2018;Ding & Shi, 2013;Sadiq Khan et al, 2020). Several factors influence it, such as soil content, vegetation changes, building material utilized inroads, and impervious and pervious surfaces Chaudhuri & Mishra, 2016;Yamamoto & Ishikawa, 2020).…”

Association between Surface Air Temperature And Land Use On The Campus Scale

“…Rubber plantation as discussed before is increasing the temperature though it is a type of vegetation. The conversion from nonbuilt land use into build use in campus development will increase the temperature (Sadiq Khan et al, 2020) and it is suggested to plant more farmlike vegetation around the area without rubberlike vegetation or water body.…”

Impervious Surfaces Mapping at City Scale by Fusion of Radar and Optical Data through a Random Forest Classifier

“…Urban heat island (UHI) effects are another consequence [115,116]. For instance, [117] identified a 1.52 • C average warming effect in Islamabad from 1993 to 2018, due to the city's increased IS. Thus, knowledge of IS spatial distribution in cities can aid in addressing the urban climate and environmental pollution issues.…”