Special Issue "Geographical Analysis and Modeling of Urban Heat Island Formation"

A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 February 2022.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Ruci Wang
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba 305-8572, Japan
Interests: urban studies; GIS; remote sensing; urban heat island; urban growth
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon, related to rapid urbanization, has attracted considerable attention from academic scholars and governmental policymakers because of its direct influence on citizens’ daily lives. The UHI effect causes a series of negative human impacts, including indirect economic loss, poor air quality, reduced comfort, imbalanced public health, and increased mortality rate. The temperature difference between the center and the periphery is expanding, especially in big cities. It could be the result of changes in land use/cover composition and increasing anthropogenic heat sources. Monitoring and modeling urban heat island formation are crucial to managing sustainable development, especially in developing countries.

This Special Issue focuses on data, method, techniques, and empirical outcomes of urban heat island studies from a time and space perspective. We wish to showcase your research papers, case studies, conceptual or analytic reviews, and policy-relevant articles to help to achieve urban sustainability.

Areas of interest include but are not necessarily restricted to:

  • Methodology and datasets for capturing urban heat island phenomena;
  • Novel techniques for urban heat island monitoring and forecasting with remote sensing and GIS;
  • Spatial relationship between urban heat island intensity and land use/cover distribution in metropolitan areas;
  • Geographical pattern and process of urban heat island phenomena in big cities through empirical studies;
  • Spatial difference of urban heat island intensity between developing and developed counties;
  • Urban heat island disaster mitigation and adaptation for future urban sustainability;
  • Prediction and scenario analysis of urban heat island formation for policy and planning.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Geomatics.

Prof. Dr. Yuji Murayama
Dr. Ruci Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Land surface temperature
  • Surface urban heat island
  • Urbanization
  • Climate change
  • Land use/cover change
  • Machine learning
  • Scenario analysis
  • Urban–rural gradient analysis
  • Time and space
  • Public health
  • Urban ecosystem services
  • Urban living environment
  • Urban heat island adaptation
  • Urban planning

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

Article
Driving Factors of Land Surface Temperature in Urban Agglomerations: A Case Study in the Pearl River Delta, China
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(15), 2858; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13152858 - 21 Jul 2021
Viewed by 471
Abstract
Land surface temperature (LST) in urban agglomerations plays an important role for policymakers in urban planning. The Pearl River Delta (PRD) is one of the regions with the highest urban densities in the world. This study aims to explore the spatial patterns and [...] Read more.
Land surface temperature (LST) in urban agglomerations plays an important role for policymakers in urban planning. The Pearl River Delta (PRD) is one of the regions with the highest urban densities in the world. This study aims to explore the spatial patterns and the dominant drivers of LST in the PRD. MODIS LST (MYD11A2) data from 2005 and 2015 were used in this study. First, spatial analysis methods were applied in order to determine the spatial patterns of LST and to identity the hotspot areas (HSAs). Second, the hotspot ratio index (HRI), as a metric of thermal heterogeneity, was developed in order to identify the features of thermal environment across the nine cities in the PRD. Finally, the geo-detector (GD) metric was employed to explore the dominant drivers of LST, which included elevation, land use/land cover (LUCC), the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), impervious surface distribution density (ISDD), gross domestic product (GDP), population density (POP), and nighttime light index (NLI). The GD metric has the advantages of detecting the dominant drivers without assuming linear relationships and measuring the combined effects of the drivers. The results of Moran’s Index showed that the daytime and nighttime LST were close to the cluster pattern. Therefore, this process led to the identification of HSAs. The HSAs were concentrated in the central PRD and were distributed around the Pearl River estuary. The results of the HRI indicated that the spatial distribution of the HSAs was highly heterogeneous among the cities for both daytime and nighttime. The highest HRI values were recorded in the cities of Dongguan and Shenzhen during the daytime. The HRI values in the cities of Zhaoqing, Jiangmen, and Huizhou were relatively lower in both daytime and nighttime. The dominant drivers of LST varied from city to city. The influence of land cover and socio-economic factors on daytime LST was higher in the highly urbanized cities than in the cities with low urbanization rates. For the cities of Zhaoqing, Huizhou, and Jiangmen, elevation was the dominant driver of daytime LST during the study period, and for the other cities in the PRD, the main driver changed from land cover in 2005 to NLI in 2015. This study is expected to provide useful guidance for planning of the thermal environment in urban agglomerations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Geographical Analysis and Modeling of Urban Heat Island Formation)
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Article
Quantifying the Cooling Effect and Scale of Large Inner-City Lakes Based on Landscape Patterns: A Case Study of Hangzhou and Nanjing
Remote Sens. 2021, 13(8), 1526; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13081526 - 15 Apr 2021
Viewed by 576
Abstract
The rapid urbanization worldwide has brought various environmental problems. The urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon is one of the most concerning issues because of its strong relation with daily lives. Water bodies are generally considered a vital resource to relieve the UHI. In [...] Read more.
The rapid urbanization worldwide has brought various environmental problems. The urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon is one of the most concerning issues because of its strong relation with daily lives. Water bodies are generally considered a vital resource to relieve the UHI. In this context, it is critical to develop a method for measuring the cooling effect and scale of water bodies in urban areas. In this study, West Lake and Xuanwu Lake, two famous natural inner-city lakes, are selected as the measuring targets. The scatter plot and multiple linear regression model were employed to detect the relationship between the distance to the lake and land surface temperature based on Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager/Thermal Infrared Sensor (OLI/TIRS) and Sentinel-2 data. The results show that West Lake and Xuanwu Lake massively reduced the land surface temperature within a few hundred meters (471 m for West Lake and 336 m for Xuanwu Lake) and have potential cooling effects within thousands of meters (2900 m for West Lake and 3700 m for Xuanwu Lake). The results provide insights for urban planners to manage tradeoffs between the large lake design in urban areas and the cooling effect demands. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Geographical Analysis and Modeling of Urban Heat Island Formation)
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