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

Muhammad Sadiq Khan, Sami Ullah, Tao Sun, Arif UR Rehman and Liding Chen
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Muhammad Sadiq Khan: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
Sami Ullah: Department of Forestry, Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University, Sheringal 18000, Pakistan
Tao Sun: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
Arif UR Rehman: College of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
Liding Chen: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 9, 1-17

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.

Keywords: land-use/land-cover changes; random forest; relative land surface temperature; warming and cooling contribution; sustainable future cities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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