Impacts of Large-Area Impervious Surfaces on Regional Land Surface Temperature in the Great Pearl River Delta, China

Rapid urbanization has led to an increase in urban land surface temperature (LST). In contrast to individual cities or megacity scale, urban agglomeration can increase LST in a continuous area due to decreasing or disappearing distance between cities. Thus, the impact of ISA on LST needs further understanding in the large scale of urban agglomerations. This study investigated the impacts of impervious surface area (ISA) on LST in urban agglomeration region. The distribution of ISA and LST of the Greater Pearl River Delta in 2015 was extracted using the Landsat 8 OLI and Aqua MODIS images. Next, the standard deviational ellipse methods were used to systematically analyze the spatial correlation of ISA and LST. Subsequently, the influences of ISA density and landscape pattern of ISA on LST were analyzed by various methods. The results showed that when the ISA density increased 10%, the daytime LST increased 0.46 °C at the density level lower than 70% and 0.55 °C at the density level higher than 70%, respectively. Likewise, when the ISA density increased 10%, the nighttime LST increased 0.285 °C at the density level lower than 70% and 0.39 °C at the density level higher than 70%, respectively. In addition, the results of correlation analysis indicated that landscape metrics of ISA and the density of ISA had significant correlation with the LST. However, the correlation was higher at daytime than at nighttime, due to the large terrain, complex environment and diverse surface cover types in the study area.