Evaluation of land surface temperature effect in istanbul using thermal remote sensing

This paper addresses both quantitative and qualitative assessment of the relationship between the Land Surface Temperatures (LST) and impervious surface changes in Istanbul, Turkey using Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) data for the period of 1987 and 2009. The impervious surface maps of city were derived using Normalized Difference Impervious Surface Index (NDISI). On the other hand, using the calibration of spectral radiance and emissivity correction, LST has been derived from the thermal band of Landsat 5 TM. To establish the relationship between LST and impervious surface, regression analysis has been conducted. The changing of LST is found to be directly correlated with impervious surface transition. The result indicates that impervious surface has a positive exponential relationship with LST. This means that the areas with high percent impervious surface will accelerate the increase of LST and Urban Heat Island (UHI) development in Istanbul. As a result, it is found that Istanbul is experiencing a serious UHI problem due to distorted and incorrect urban management strategies, mainly.