Investigating the relationships between ecological structure of Neyshabuor city and heat islands patterns with emphasis on landscape ecology approach

The growth of urbanization has changed the ecological structure by changing the land use and cover, creating urban heat islands (UHI) and has been caused climate changes in the last decades. City of Neyshabuor has experienced the above mentioned changes; thus, studying and analysis of changes may lead to improve the ecological conditions. The main question in this research is how the ecological elements and structure affects heat islands patterns in Neyshabuor urban area. The present study is based on Landscape Ecology approach and metrics that were used to evaluate the ecological structure of Neyshabuor urban area. The purpose of the research is to analysis the relationship between ecological structure of Neyshabuor city, land surface temperature and heat islands pattern. Satellite images related to ETM sensor of Landsat satellite have been used in August 2010 to evaluate heat islands. The results indicate that there is significant correlation between landscape metrics and LST pattern. Accordingly, the composition and configuration of landscape metrics have significantly negative correlation with UHI. It suggests that the landscape elements such as, green spaces, gardens, farmlands and etc. can mitigate the effect on LST and UHI in our case study. Although, characteristics of landscape spatial structure have different correlation with LST and UHI, but positive synergy in ecological elements can help to decrease or preventing of LST and UHI effects in build up area.