Variation of albedo with the increased impervious surface in Beijing-Tianjin area of China

As a key parameter representing the outgoing solar flux fractions reflected by earth surface, the albedo of land surface has been strongly altered by the change of land covers, especially the increase of the impervious surface caused by the urbanization. This paper discussed and demonstrated the albedo changed with the impervious increases around Beijing-Tianjin urban region, where land cover type has been strongly changed since the 1980s, especially a large scale of buildings and roads increased in Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. We extracted the variation information of albedo from MODIS data as well as the impervious changes by using two scenes Landsat Thematic Mapper images. The relationship between the change pattern of albedo and the impervious surface was discussed and especially the regions within the five rim of Beijing urban, and the surrounding areas along two Jing-Jin highways were paid more attention to. It was found that the variation of the near infrared albedo albedo in 2008 shows an obvious change with the increase of impervious surface, while the change is not apparent in the visible band.