Understanding the influence of COVID-19 induced lockdown on urban thermal environment of Ranchi city, India

ABSTRACT

The objective of the study is to understand the pattern of land surface temperature (LST) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) developed in Ranchi city during Covid-19-induced lockdown (2020) and its comparison with previous years. The study incorporated Landsat 8 (Operational land imager) data from United States Geological Survey and air temperature and relative humidity data from power.larc.nasa.gov for the years 2017, 2019 and 2020. The results exposed a drastic change in the LST and NDVI pattern of the city. The mean LST of the city during April has declined from 39.80°C in 2017 to 32.38°C in 2020. Similarly, the mean LST of May also declined from 38.41°C in 2017 to 34.84°C in 2020. On the contrary, the city experienced an ascending growth of NDVI from 0.24 to 0.26 in April and May 2017 to 0.349 and 0.37 in 2020, respectively. Additionally, the city portrays declining air temperature with enhanced relative humidity. Ranchi city also exhibited relatively maximum area under ecologically excellent category in the year 2020 and reduced area under ecologically the worst category based on urban thermal field variance index. Thus, reduced temperature with augmented humidity and NDVI developed a healthy urban environment.

KEYWORDS:

• LST
• NDVI
• air temperature
• relative humidity
• UTFVI

Acknowledgments

The author of the manuscript is thankful to earthexplorer.usgs.gov and power.larc.nasa.gov for providing required datasets for successful completion of this research work. The author is also very much thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions for the upgradation of this manuscript. Finally, the author is very much thankful to Rima Changmai for proofreading and final completion of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The author of the manuscript declares that there are no associated data with the manuscript