Investigating the Effects of Land Use Change on Spatiotemporal Patterns of Land Surface Temperature and Thermal Islands (Case Study: Saqqez County)

Land surface temperature is one of the important parameters in environmental science and urban planning. Human activities, such as land use degradation and urban development, have the effect of increasing the land surface temperature and thus the appearance of thermal islands, and this phenomenon has adverse effects on human health over time. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of land use change on spatiotemporal patterns of land surface temperature and thermal islands in Saqqez city. In this study, images from the years 1989, 1998, 2008, and 2018 were first categorized using the Maximum Likelihood Algorithm in ENVI software. Then, using a Split window algorithm, land surface temperature was extracted in the GIS software. Also NDVI, UHII, and UHIII indices were used to study the spatiotemporal land surface temperature and thermal islands. Also, land surface temperature of the low, medium and high vegetation classes was extracted during the period. The results of the classification accuracy with Kappa coefficient above 80% show the validity of the results. Also, the results of the evaluation of land use changes indicate the increasing trend of water, residential and bare lands areas and the decreasing trend of vegetation. In other words, 3.68, 38.43 and 514/02 km, respectively, are the area of water, residential and bare lands areas has been added, and a total of 550/06 km2 has been cut from the vegetation area to the 29-year period. Also, the results of maximum temperature of each land use indicate an increasing trend in temperature in residential and bare lands areas and vegetation during the studied period. According to the results of UHII and UHIII indices, the class with low vegetation has the highest temperature compared to the middle and high vegetation classes and also based on the results of these indicators, the thermal islands occurred in the northeastern parts of the city in 2008 and 2018.