Nowadays, land cover changes are a major issue of global environmental change. Investigation on this subject has now been done by using remote sensing application. Research has been done in the Penang Island, which is one of the affected areas due to industrial and residential areas growth. Thus, this monograph is published to demonstrate an effective application through remote sensing technique to explore the environmental change and its impact on local environment that is caused by abrupt change in land use. It provides appropriate and comprehensive information for researchers involved in the study of environmental management, urban planning, land surface characteristics, and related support fields. This monograph highlights the relationship between land surface temperature and normalized difference vegetation index as the major results. The remote sensing technique used in this study was found to be efficient. It reduced the time for the analysis of land cover changes and was found to be a useful tool. Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Cartography, Geographic Information Science and Geodesy, Sheffield Hallam University, language: English, abstract: This research examines the changes in land use/land cover in the city of Sulaymaniyah north of Iraq and identifies land surface temperature variations among the land cover types. The primary aim of this study is to use Landsat-5 TM imagery with GIS techniques to study and investigate the impact of urban expansion on land surface temperature (LST) for three year periods. Three Landsat 5 TM images were obtained in July 1984, August 2000 and October 2010. Land use categories were derived through the use of supervised classification techniques and the land surface temperature was obtained by computing the brightness temperature from the satellite sensor. The result showed that between 1984 and 2010, there was a mild decrease in open and barren lands from 69.3% in 1984 to 57.2% in 2010 while the built-up areas increased from 11.5% in 1984 to 15.5% in 2000 and reached 25.5% by 2010.The political and economic changes in the study area are the main factors behind the recent urban expansion. The lowest LST readings were taken from the vegetation lands with values of 28oC in 1984, 29oC in 2000 and 34oC in 2010. The barren lands recorded the highest temperature of 38oC, 38oC and 34oC for the years 1984, 2000 and 2010 respectively. An interesting observation in this study is the fact that the urban areas where found to be cooler than its surroundings zones. This is revealed by the LST analysis conducted, with the recent increase in green spaces in the city playing a major role in cooling the temperature there. In relating NDVI to LST, the study found a strong negative correlation between them having derived correlation values of the values of (-0.70), (-0.69) and (-0.73) for 1984, 2000 and 2010 respectively. Conclusively, remote sensing and GIS proved to be very effective in studying and monitoring the relationship between urban growth and surface temperature. Recommendations were made to encourage the expansion of urban surfaces into the surrounding areas, especially barren lands, in order to cool those areas.

Taking the Temperature of the Earth: Steps towards Integrated Understanding of Variability and Change presents an integrated, collaborative approach to observing and understanding various surface temperatures from a whole-Earth perspective. The book describes the progress in improving the quality of surface temperatures across different domains of the Earth's surface (air, land, sea, lakes and ice), assessing variability and long-term trends, and providing applications of surface temperature data to detect and better understand Earth system behavior. As cooperation is essential between scientific communities, whose focus on particular domains of Earth's surface and on different components of the observing system help to accelerate scientific understanding and multiply the benefits for society, this book bridges the gap between domains. - Includes sections on data validation and uncertainty, data availability and applications - Integrates remote sensing and in situ data sources - Presents a whole earth perspective on surface temperature datasets, delving into all domains to build and understand relationships between the datasets

This book presents the spatial and temporal dynamics of land use and land cover in the central Tibetan Plateau during the last two decades, based on various types of satellite data, long-term field investigation and GIS techniques. Further, it demonstrates how remote sensing can be used to map and characterize land use, land cover and their dynamic processes in mountainous regions, and to monitor and model relevant biophysical parameters. The Tibetan Plateau, the highest and largest plateau on the Earth and well known as “the roof of the world,” is a huge mountainous area on the Eurasian continent and covers millions of square kilometers, with an average elevation of over 4000 m. After providing an overview of the background and an introduction to land use and land cover change, the book analyzes the current land use status, dynamic changes and spatial distribution patterns of different land-use types in the study area, using various types of remotely sensed data, digital elevation models and GIS spatial analysis methods to do so. In turn, it discusses the main driving forces, based on the main physical environment variables and socioeconomic data, and provides a future scenario analysis of land use change using a Markov chain model. Given its scope, it provides a valuable reference guide for researchers, scientists and graduate students working on environmental change in mountainous regions around the globe, and for practitioners working at government and non-government agencies.