Monitoring influence of urbanization on urban thermal environment using multi-temporal LANDSAT imagery: application to Da Nang city

Abstract

This study illustrates urbanization in Da Nang city and its impacts on local thermal environments using remote sensing. In this study, multi-generation Landsat images from were used to assess the city's urban expansion and accompanied land surface temperature (LST) characteristics. Results showed that Da Nang urban expanded twice in 2014 (8,634 ha) comparing to 1990 (4,485 ha) and high temperature anomalies were closely associated with built-up and bare-soil land-covers. As consequence, areas covered by the highest LST correspondently expanded from center of Thanh Khe, Hai Chau districts to mostly all 6 present downtown districts. The mean LST difference between the urban downtown area and the suburban area tends to increase over time, from 7.3 o C in 1990 to 11.9 o C in 2014. In the context of moving towards "a friendly environmental Da Nang city", this study provides useful information for understanding the local climatic and environment changes that occurred during rapid urbanization.