Microclimate land surface temperatures across urban land useland cover forms

Urbanization brings biophysical changes in the composition of the landscape. Such changehas an impact on the thermal environment locally. The urban mosaic of land use and land cover is thuscharacteristically composed of local climate zones. The spatial variation in the land surface temperatureacross specific zone is studied for Bhopal city. The objective of the study was to understand how the surfacetemperature varies with the spatial characteristics of the landscape. The green spaces had the lowest surfacetemperature that reaches to about 30.5 °C in parks with dense tree cover and highest mean normalizeddifference vegetation index value of about 0.5. The surface temperature was 36.1 °C for built up/barrenareas. The study documents the correlation that exists between surface vegetation and surface temperatureacross the landscape of Bhopal city. The extent of tree cover and land surface temperature exhibited a strongnegative correlation. A decrease in vegetation cover and successive increase in urban built up area werefound to be related with high surface temperature. This implies that land surface temperature is an effectivetool and may help city planners to make appropriate strategies for improving the tree resources of the urbanlandscape.

Keywords:

Land surface temperature , Land use/cover , Microclimate , Normalized difference vegetation index , Urbanization