Measuring the Degree of Spatial Autocorrelation of Land Surface Temperature with Land Use (Isfahan City)

Urban Heat Island (UHI) is an important factor for heat change and balance in global studies and is considered as a proxy for climate change. Studying this phenomenon and investigating its mechanism are very important in urban planning. During the last two decades, the great need for earth surface temperature information for environmental studies and land resource management activities has turned earth surface temperature remote sensing into one of the most important scientific issues (Sobrino et al., 2004). In a research, Hay et al. (2018) studied the effect of the topographical factor on LST in mountainous areas. The results of their research showed that there was a high correlation between topography parameters and surface temperature. For the area studied in this research, the relationship between LST and altitude was inversely linear. Tran et al. (2017) used Landsat 5,7,8 in order to determine the relationship between land cover change and land surface temperature of the inner city of Hanoi (plain and flat area). The results revealed that: a) LST depends on the non-linear method of LULC types; b) Foci analysis by using the Getis Ord Gi* statistic allows analysis of LST pattern change over time; c) UHI is affected from both the urban perspective and type of urban development; d) investigation of LST pattern prediction and UHI effect can be done by the proposed model by using nonlinear regression and simulated LULC change scenarios. In a research in a city of China, the harmful effects of land cover and land use changes on the Earth's surface temperature were investigated through vegetation indicators based on three image sensors of TM and ETM+. For this purpose, the researchers obtained the Temperature Vegetation Index (TVX) from the images. Their results showed that land use change is an important factor for increasing the Earth's surface temperature. It also showed high temperature in areas with scattered vegetation and low temperature in areas with dense vegetation. It has been used in the statistical period of 2013-2015 in the city of Isfahan as well. The results of this research showed that there was a sharp thermal gradient due to the presence of Urban Cold Islands (UCI) between the center and suburbs. The largest UCI was identified in Region 6 (Ahmadi et al., 2016).