Modelling future land use land cover changes and their impacts on land surface temperatures in Rajshahi, Bangladesh

Abstract Urbanization causes enormous land use and land cover (LULC) changes, which creates a significant impacts on land surface temperature (LST) in rapidly growing mega-cities. The substantial increment of the LST creates urban heat island (UHI) effects in cities. This study first identified the pattern of the LULC changes, and later, investigated their impacts on LST in Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC) areas for the years of 1999, 2009 and 2019 using Landsat TM/OLI satellite images. This study explored the impact of LULC change on LST through LST distribution in different land use categories, cross-section profile of LULC wise LST variability, and a correlation between LULC indexes (NDVI, NDBI, NDBaI & NDWI) and LST. The Multi-Layer Perceptron-Markov Chain (MLP-MC) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) methods were utilized to simulate the LULC and LST maps, respectively, for the years of 2029 and 2039. The accuracy of LULC and LST simulation models are more than 85% and 90% , respectively, based on the validation results. Simulation results show if the current trend of urban growth continues, 70% and 88% of RCC area will experience temperature more than 38 °C in 2029 and 2039, respectively. Such impacts need to be considered and evaluated immediately for ensuring sustainable urbanization and natural resource management in the RCC area. This study will be helpful for urban planners and environmental engineers to understand the impacts of LULC change (e.g. loss of vegetation cover, agricultural land and water bodies to accommodate extensive urban growth) on LST and to propose appropriate policy measures to control it.