Characterizing the relationship between land use land cover change and land surface temperature

Exploring changes in land use land cover (LULC) to understand the urban heat island (UHI) effect is valu-able for both communities and local governments in cities in developing countries, where urbanization and industrialization often take place rapidly but where coherent planning and control policies have not been applied. This work aims at determining and analyzing the relationship between LULC change and land surface temperature (LST) patterns in the context of urbanization. We first explore the relation-ship between LST and vegetation, man-made features, and cropland using normalized vegetation, and built-up indices within each LULC type. Afterwards, we assess the impacts of LULC change and urbanization in UHI using hot spot analysis (Getis-Ord Gi* statistics) and urban landscape analysis. Finally, we pro-pose a model applying non-parametric regression to estimate future urban climate patterns using predicted land cover and land use change. Results from this work provide an effective methodology for UHI characterization, showing that (a) LST depends on a nonlinear way of LULC types; (b) hotspot anal-ysis using Getis Ord Gi* statistics allows to analyze the LST pattern change through time; (c) UHI is influ-enced by both urban landscape and urban development type; (d) LST pattern forecast and UHI effect examination can be done by the proposed model using nonlinear regression and simulated LULC change scenarios. We chose an inner city area of Hanoi as a case-study, a small and flat plain area where LULC change is significant due to urbanization and industrialization. The methodology presented in this paper can be broadly applied in other cities which exhibit a similar dynamic growth. Our findings can represent an useful tool for policy makers and the community awareness by providing a scientific basis for sustain-able urban planning and management. (C) 2017 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.