Land Cover Impact Assessment of Land Surface Temperature Using Thermal Remote Sensing Data: A Case Study in Tehran

Today the world is experiencing an unprecedented urbanization. Population growth and urbanization are effective factors on increasing the air temperature in urban areas which cause heat island on these areas than surrounding and the resulted effects from that can play an important and major role in air quality and consequently public health. In this study, Landsat 5 TM data in 2009 as a case study in Tehran metropolis was studied and mono-window algorithm was used for retrieving the distribution of land surface temperature and determination of local heat island effects. In addition, the correlation between LST and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the normalized difference build-up index (NDBI), the normalized difference bare land index (NDBaI), the normalized difference water index (NDWI), were analyzed to explore the impacts of the green and bare land and the water and build-up land on the urban heat island. The results indicate that the effect of urban heat island in Tehran is mainly located in west industrial and east and southeast Mountain regions. The correlation between LST and NDVI, NDBI, NDWI, NDBaI also indicates that the negative correlation of LST and NDVI and NDWI suggests that the green and water land could weaken the effect on urban heat island, while the positive correlation between LST and NDBI and NDBaI means that the built-up and Bare land can strengthen the effect of urban heat island in our case study.