Assessment of urbanization and different land use and land cover types on urban heat islands in growing cities, a case study: Tabriz, Iran

Abstract

In this study, Landsat ETM⁺ and OLI images from 1984 to 2013 were selected to examine the relationship between land surface temperature and land use pattern in Tabriz, and to investigate the impact of land use changes on the urban heat islands. First, the mono-window algorithm was utilized to retrieve land surface temperature from thermal band of Landsat images. The zonal statistic was then carried out to evaluate the area proportion of land use classes in each LST category. Finally, the urban thermal characteristic was analyzed by investigating the relationships between the land surface temperature and land use types. The results suggest that the process of urbanization in Tabriz has significant effects on the surface temperature.