Monitoring and Prediction of Land Use Land Cover Changes and its Impact on Land Surface Temperature in the Central Part of Hisar District, Haryana Under Semi-Arid Zone of India

Abstract Land use Land cover have significance in relation to Land, the most vital and fundamental resource pertaining to the urban development. Unprecedented urban growth has a noteworthy impact on natural landscape by converting natural land-cover in Haryana. Hisar, an area recognized for rapid urban growth is less explored in terms of research. The present research has shown a significant change in land use in terms of expansion of built-up area from 3.7 % (1991) to 5.0 % (2001) and 6.2 % (2011) by encroaching into agricultural land. Despite the clear difference between average land surface temperature for built up and non-built up area, grazing land and sandy waste, bare land in the rural surrounding possess higher temperature compared to the city core which contradicts the reported impact of urbanization earlier. Such contrary pertains to sparse vegetation cover leading to reduced evaporative cooling during dry pre-monsoon summer in the rural surrounding. On the other side, green parks and plantation in the city contribute to lower mean temperature because of high rates of evapotranspiration and produce ‘oasis effect’ in the present study area located in semi-arid climatic zone. Regression analysis between temperature and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Normalized Difference Built-up Index exhibited a strong negative and positive correlation respectively (Pearson’s r: between -0.79 to -0.87 and between 0.79 to 0.84 respectively). Future land use prediction project an increase (1.3 %) in built-up area from 2011 to 2021. This study recommends urban plantation and prohibition to overgrazing to check the heat effect.