RS and GIS Supported Urban LULC and UHI Change Simulation and Assessment

Rapid urbanization has become a major urban sustainability concern due to environmental impacts, such as the development of urban heat island (UHI) and the reduction of urban security states. To date, most research on urban sustainability development has focused on dynamic change monitoring or UHI state characterization, while there is little literature on UHI change analysis. In addition, there has been little research on the impact of land use and land cover changes (LULCCs) on UHI, especially simulates future trends of LULCCs, UHI change, and dynamic relationship of LULCCs and UHI. The purpose of this research is to design a remote sensing-based framework that investigates and analyzes how the LULCCs in the process of urbanization affected thermal environment. In order to assess and predict the impact of LULCCs on urban heat environment, multitemporal remotely sensed data from 1986 to 2016 were selected as source data, and Geographic Information System (GIS) methods such as the CA-Markov model were employed to construct the proposed framework. The results showed that (1) there has been a substantial strength of urban expansion during the 40-year study period, (2) the farthest distance urban center of gravity moves from north-northeast (NEE) to west-southwest (WSW) direction, (3) the dominate temperature was middle level, sub-high level, and high level in the research area, (4) there was a higher changing frequency and range from east to west, and (5) there was a significant negative correlation between land surface temperature and vegetation and significant positive correlation between temperature and human settlement.