Assessing the link between land use/land cover changes and land surface temperature in Himalayan urban center, Srinagar

The rapidly growing urbanization and the consequent land use/land cover (LULC) changes have resulted in unsustainable growth of cities in Indian subcontinent especially in Himalayan region which are highly sensitivity to condition like climate change. Using multi-temporal and multi-spectral satellite datasets, this study analyzes the impact of LULC changes on land surface temperature (LST) in the Himalayan city of Srinagar from 1992 to 2020. For LULC classification, the maximum likelihood classifier technique was utilized, and to extract LST from Landsat 5 (TM) and Landsat 8 (TM) (OLI), spectral radiance was employed. The results show that, among various LULC classes, built-up area has seen a maximum increase of 14% while agriculture has decreased by about 21%. On the whole, Srinagar city has witnessed an increase in LST by 4.5 degrees C with maximum increase of 5.35 degrees C especially over marshes and a minimum increase of 4 degrees C on agriculture landscape. Other LULC categories of built-up, water bodies, and plantation saw an increase in LST by 4.19 degrees C, 4.47 degrees C, and 5.07 degrees C, respectively. The transformation of marshes into built-up saw a maximum increase in LST by 7.18 degrees C followed by water body to built-up (6.96 degrees C) and water body to agriculture (6.18 degrees C) while minimum increase was seen in the conversion of agriculture to marshes by about 2.42 degrees C followed by agriculture to plantation (3.84 degrees C) and plantation to marshes (3.86 degrees C). The findings may be useful to urban planners and policymakers in terms of land use planning and city thermal environment control.