Recognition and analysis of urban heat islands using Landsat 8 satellite image (Case example: Shiraz city)

The expansion of urbanization has significant effects on the planet. One of the effects that people are dealing with today is global warming, which has appeared as urban heat islands. Heat islands are urban areas that are significantly warmer than the surrounding environment. The purpose of the research is to extract the spatial-temporal changes of the thermal islands of Shiraz using satellite images and to determine the relationship between the type of land cover and its surface temperature. In this regard, first the necessary pre-processing was done to prepare a user map on the images and the changes in land cover, water, wind, vegetation and albedo and the sky visibility index of the studied area were also extracted and satellite images were prepared and interpreted in the GIS environment. The results show that point number 9 (Qasr al-Dasht gardens of Shiraz) has the lowest temperature and this shows the inverse relationship between green spaces and thermal islands. The use of remote sensing data plays an important role in the management of urban space and effectively helps city managers in urban space planning. Urban building materials have a significant effect on intensifying heat islands in such a way that the use of standard materials reduces the temperature to a large extent, and vegetation has a reducing effect and built surfaces have intensifying effects on heat islands. The pattern of spatial and temporal distribution of thermal islands is influenced by the pattern of land use distribution.