Satellite sensor data analysis of urban surface temperatures and land use / land cover

With the rapid population growth, urbanization has become a common trend all over the world since the 20th Century. Meanwhile, urban air temperature is rising gradually in all the cities. In this paper, we took an oasis city—Urumqi as an example, investigated application of integration of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) to detect the land use/cover change and urban growth, besides assessed their impacts on land surface temperature in this region. The results indicated as fellows: 1) during the last 20 years from 1990 to 2009, land use of Urumqi appeared a dramatic variation; 2) The mean annul temperatures of the land surface in Urumqi were 21.63°C and 25.39°C in 1990 and 2009, respectively. 3) According to the characteristics of the standard classification maps of land surface temperature and they revealed that the urban development had raised the land surface temperature of the urban. 4) Integration of remote sensing and GIS was an effective way to monitor and analyze urban growth pattern, and evaluate the urbanization impact on land surface temperature.