A GIS Based Study of Urbanization Impact on Land Surface Temperature in Greater Noida, India

Abstract

Urbanization has a dynamic relationship with the environment which involves large scale changes in the land use pattern of an area. Human induced land use land cover (LULC) changes have become major driver of the global climatic change. In general urbanization affects the interactions between the surface temperature and atmosphere at spatial and temporal scales. The objective of this study is to analyze whether the changes in the land use land pattern of Greater Noida is contributing to the change of its land surface temperature (LST). Geographic Information System (GIS) was used to extract information from satellite images of three years namely, 2000, 2011, and 2013. The biophysical parameter Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was calculated from satellite images for examining the relationship between land surface temperature and vegetation. The results showed that there has been a 35.23% increase in the settlement and developed lands from 2000 to 2013 leading to a sharp decline of 91.14 % in the cultivation and others. Forest and urban vegetation was decreased by 4.06% from 2000 to 2010 but during 2013 the forest and urban vegetation was found to have increased by 7.45%. There has been a 1ºC to 2ºC rise in the surface temperature in Greater Noida since 2000 to 2013.