Satellite imagery driven assessment of land use land cover, urbanization and surface temperature pattern dynamics over tropical megacities

Abstract

In most of the developing nations, fast paced urbanisation is going on. This has changed the spatial patterns of Land Use Land Cover (LULC) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) over time. Continual studies are required in this context to know these phenomena more clearly. This study is carried out to analyse the spatio-Temporal changes in LULC, urbanisation and LST in the metropolitan cities of India namely Delhi and Bengaluru. Landsat images of TM and OLI sensors are taken for the years 2001, 2010 and 2020. The LULC layer is obtained through supervised image classification. Concentric circles at the interval of 2 km are drawn from the centroid of the study areas which are used to compute Shannon's entropy through zonal analysis of the reclassified LULC layer. The thermal band of the Landsat is used for the computation of LST. The results of both the study areas revealed 1) decline in the open land, vegetation and water body; 2) rampant growth of built-up and urban area which become more compact over the years; and 3) spread of the higher LST zones.