Effect of the Urban Land Cover Types on the Surface Temperature: Case Study of Ilsan New City

Abstract

The physical environment of urban areas covered mostly by concrete and asphalt is the main cause of the urban heat island effect, primarily becoming apparent through increased land surface temperature. This study examined the effect of different urban land cover types on the land surface temperature using MODIS, Landsat ETM+ and RapidEye satellite data. As a result, the remote sensing based land surface temperature showed a marked difference according to the land use pattern in the case study of Ilsan new city. The high-rise apartment residential districts with less building-to-land ratio and higher green area ratio revealed lower land surface temperature than the low-story single-family housing districts characterized by relatively high building-to-land ratio and low green area ratio. From the view of climate zone and land cover types, there is a strong linear correlation between the impervious land cover ratio and the land surface temperature; the land surface temperature increases as the impervious built-up areas expand. In contrast, vegetation, water and shadow areas affect the decrease of land surface temperature. There is also a negative (-) correlation between NDVI and land surface temperature but the seasonal variation of NDVI can be hardly corrected.