Linking LULC change with urban heat islands over 25 years: a case study of the urban-industrial city Durgapur, Eastern India

ABSTRACT

Changing land use patterns have triggered warming worldwide in recent times, especially in urban areas. This study analyses the development of a heat island over Durgapur in the last 25 years in terms of LULC change by using various indices. The rapid decrease of vegetation covers, more precisely, 77% in 1990 to 22% in 2015, and its conversion to built-up land has contributed a 1.4% increase in the city LST (land surface temperature). LST is found to be positively related to built-up areas and negatively to vegetation increase. The difference in LST between the core and the periphery also reduced from more than 4°C in 1990 to less than 2.5°C in 2015. This shows not only the development of a heat island over Durgapur because of LULC change in the past few years but also the expansion of the heat island towards the surrounding areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban heat island
• land use land cover change
• land surface temperature
• NDVI
• NDBI

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to ISRO for funding the project (SRO/RES/4/625/2015-16) and are also grateful to DST, Government of India, for funding to set up a sophisticated laboratory under the DST-FIST programme wherein our analytical work was performed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplementary data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ISRO (ISRO/RES/4/625/2015-16).