Exploring the Relationship Between Land Surface Temperature and Land Use Change in Lahore Using Landsat Data

The present study focuses on determining the correlation of land surface temperature (LST) with normalized difference builtup index (NDBI) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of Lahore, a metropolitan city of Pakistan using landsat 5 and 8 dataset. This study also categorizes different types of land use through supervised image classification scheme and maximum likelihood algorithm (MLA), and assess the correlation between LST and land use type of different classes. The results of the study indicate that modifications in type of land use altered spatial variations of land surface temperature in 1990 and 2015. The findings also show that the ever increasing temperature caused by impervious surfaces such as builtup area, roads, construction sites and vacant land considerably contributes to heat island effect. However, vegetation cover, green and blue spaces decrease LST and effectively relieve the effect of heat island. LST builds a strong positive correlation with NDBI and strong negative correlation with NDVI. Based on the regression analysis between LST and NDBI and NDVI, these indices can be utilized as a sign to assess the impact of LU changes on temperature. The results further indicates that LST changes follow the pattern of LU changes in Lahore and the warmness intensity has been observed highest in the high density builtup area and vacant land, while low at the green and blue spaces. The analysis reveals that an increase in LST by 1.98 °C during the period of 25 years at the rate of 0.079 °C/year in high density builtup area was due to the excessive increase in settlement growth. The study concludes that change of land use has an effect on the LST in Lahore.