Investigating land use land cover changes and their effects on land surface temperature and urban heat islands in Sharqiyah Governorate, Egypt

Abstract

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) issue is a result of the undesirable effects of urban growth on the environment, such as temperature rises and landscape changes that cause environmental dangers. Thus, the purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of Land Use Land Cover (LULC) change on Land Surface Temperature (LST) and then study UHI in Sharqiyah from 2001 to 2022 using remote sensing data. This data was collected from the Landsat satellite and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 11A Thermal sensors. A Mono-Window Algorithm was used on Landsat 8 and 9 data to estimate the LST. To determine the LST and UHI, the thermal band was utilized. LULC maps were created using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification technique. To evaluate various LULC indices in the Sharqiyah and find their correlation with LST, the spectral indices Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Bare Land Index (NDBaI), and Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) were obtained from the processing of multispectral Landsat data. To check data sources, air temperature measurements for Sharqiyah were also acquired. The results show that urban expansion has increased in a noticeable trend. The built-up area increased by 18.9% during the research phase, and the region's mean LST increased within 3.98℃. The UHI threshold temperature increased by 4.27℃. This research is critical for Planning Engineers and environmental scientists to realize LULC variations effects on LST and to suggest suitable political steps to regulate urbanization in Sharqiyah Governorate.