ABSTRACT
Rapid urbanisation worldwide has resulted in urban areas covering nearly 0.5 per cent of the earth’s total land surface, accommodating approximately half of its population (Ma et al., 1973), which creates a series of urban environmental issues. The most notable one is the urban heat island (UHI) effect, which refers to the temperature over urban areas being higher than that of surrounding rural areas (Oke, 1973). The UHI effect has been attracting much attention because of its impact on air quality, energy use, and comfort in urban areas (Voogt, 2004). Remote sensing (RS) technology has been playing an important role in UCMap and UHI studies because of its spatially continuous, long-term accumulated characteristics (Voogt and Oke, 2003). The surface UHI (SUHI) measured by the land surface temperature (LST) has been extensively reported in previous literatures using RS images (Weng, 2009). It is agreed that SUHI is caused by the replacement of vegetated areas with artificial and impervious surfaces, and the LST over urban surfaces corresponds closely to the land use/cover types in urban areas (Rinner and Hussain, 2011). More accurate assessment SUHI is important for the future development of UC-Maps for planning.
