Impact of Urbanization-induced Land Use Land Cover Change on Land Surface Temperature and Thermal Comfort: The case of Dire Dawa, Ethiopia.

Abstract

Urbanization-induced land use and land cover changes have significant impacts on land surface temperature and thermal comfort. This study was focused on assessing an Implications of Urbanization-Induced Land Use Land Cover Changes on Land Surface Temperature and Thermal Comfort in Dire Dawa City between 2000 and 2022. The City is experiencing rapid urbanization, and limitation of green area aesthetical values that has resulted in remarkable surface temperature. Despite this, as of yet, no evaluations have been duly executed pertaining to the thermal or ecological factors in Dire Dawa. The study utilized Landsat and MODIS 11A2 images for the study area. Respectively to analyze and show results clearly, ArcGIS 10.8, ERDAS IMAGINE 2014, and Excel 2013 softwares were used. The LULC pattern was processed by supervised classification with the maximum likelihood classification algorithm and four major land use land cover (Built-up area, Barren land, Shrub land, and sparse vegetation) were identified. The researcher employed NDVI to portray vegetation coverage, the spatial distribution of LST of the study area was extracted and quantified using Landsat thermal bands, to investigate the relationships between different LULC classes and LST, NDBI and NDVI land cover indices have developed and investigated through the use of correlation and linear regression techniques. Furthermore to better assess and evaluate the ecological thermal condition of the city, UTFVI was quantitatively analyzed following an equation. The findings of the study Over the 22-year period revealed that, barren land and shrub land showed continuous decrement, whereas the built-up area expanded significantly, gaining about 10 km2 land from bare land and shrub land cover categories. The LST has mostly increased in the land classes of bare land, shrub land, and built-up land class. The study reached that LST and built-up area have positive relationship, while have a negative correlation with vegetation. The trends of thermal comfort in Dire dawa shows that the area under the excellent category is continuing to remain constant, while the worst ecological zones have expanded significantly. The study shows that changes in land use and cover affect urban ecology and health. To address these concerns, it is crucial to implement effective measures for sustainable land management practices.