Investigating land surface temperature changes using Landsat-5 data and real-time infrared thermometer measurements at Konya Closed Basin in Turkey

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate multi-temporal land surface temperature (LST) changes of Konya Closed Basin (KCB) in Turkey using remotely sensed data. KCB is located in the semi-arid central Anatolian region of Turkey and hosts many important wetland sites including Salt Lake. Six Landsat-5 TM images selected from the 1984-2011 period were used in the analysis. A real-time field work was performed during the overpass of Landsat-5 satellite on 21/08/2011 over Salt Lake to collect coordinated temperature measurements using a handheld GPS and thermal infrared thermometer. All satellite images were geometrically and radiometrically corrected to relate the image data with in-situ measurements. Thematic LST images were used to evaluate the conditions over the region between 1984 and 2011. The results show that real-time ground temperature and satellite remote sensing data were in good agreement with correlation coefficient (R2) values of 0.94. The remotely sensed and processed satellite images and resulting thematic indices maps show that dramatic land surface temperature changes occurred (about 2 degrees C) in the KCB from 1984 to 2011. Analysis of climatic data supports this finding. Air temperatures and pan evaporation had significant upward trends from 1984 to 2011. Analysis conducted using both LST and climatic data prove that the basin has been experiencing drought in recent years. It is suggested that the use of water supplies, especially ground water should be controlled taking into account particularly summer drought impacts over the basin.