Abstract

Rapid changes in the land use and land cover of a region have become a major environmental concern in recent times.  This has lead to unsustainable development with the reduction of green spaces and also changes in local climate and formation of urban heat islands (UHI). Monitoring and management of land use dynamics would help in land use planning and mitigation of environmental impacts.The main goal of this paper is to quantify the changes in the land cover and consequent changes in land surface temperature. Land use and land cover dynamics were assessed using temporal remote sensing data (Landsat Thematic Mapper and Enhanced Thematic Mapper data) of Himachal Pradesh, India. The thermal  infrared bands of  the Landsat data  were used  to retrieve Land Surface Temperature. The results revealed that there was a huge increase in Urban Area (including barren land), which is the causal factor for the changes in Land Surface Temperature. Overall, Remote  sensing and Geographic Information System technologies were effective approaches for monitoring and analyzing urban growth patterns and evaluating their impacts on Land Surface Temperature.

Keywords : Land Surface Temperature, Landsat, Land Use,  Land cover, NDVI.