Mapping Urban Heat Island Effect in Comparison with the Land Use, Land Cover of Lahore District

As the population in urban areas around the world grows each year, cities struggling to cope with the increased urban migration expand at varying rates. This urban sprawl comes with the expansion and exacerbation of the Surface Urban Heat Islands (SUHI) of cities. The connection between land-use/land-cover (LULC) and the Land Surface Temperature (LST) is the focus of this study, more specifically which of the LULC practices prevalent in Pakistani cities are particularly contributing to the formation, expansion and intensification of SUHIs is the question this study aims to answer. LST of the district of Lahore was calculated using Landsat images more than a decade apart. The LULC types were also mapped using supervised classification techniques, while the training areas for the classification were gathered using random sampling technique during a survey of the study area. Using the resultant LST & LULC maps of the city and superimposing the boundaries of several new satellite towns of the city, the temporal changes in LST and LULC were compared. The built-up surface area within the city district in 2011 showed 25 % increase since 2000