Abstract
The manifestation of effects of urbanization on the thermal environment of a city is often related to Urban Heat Island (UHI) by various studies. The presence of abnormal warmth in urban areas as compared to rural surroundings is defined as UHI. Satellite images in thermal infrared can be used for assessing thermal environment as well as for defining Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) in urban areas. In this chapter, Guwahati city and its surrounding areas have been studied to observe the changes in the thermal environment that has occurred between the years 1989 and 2010 by means of satellite images provided by Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) onboard Landsat 5. A range of influences have been investigated in the form of relationship between Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Radiant Surface Temperature (Ts) to see the influence of sensible heat flux and urban density over the urban vegetation as an indicator of modified temperature regime over the years. The study tried to quantify the UHI phenomenon in the city by measuring Urban Heat Island Intensity (UHII) using remote sensing technique. The objective of the study was to quantify changes in the urban thermal environment of Guwahati, a rapidly growing city of Northeast India, which will help in studying various effects of urbanization in future.
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Acknowledgements
The support of the Atmospheric Science Division, National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad and Centre of Excellence, under the MoUD sponsored project for Integrated Land use Planning and Water Resource Management in the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati is gratefully acknowledged.
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Borbora, J., Das, A.K., Sah, R.K., Hazarika, N. (2018). Assessment of Urban Heat Island Effect in Guwahati—A Remote Sensing Based Study. In: Sarma, A., Singh, V., Bhattacharjya, R., Kartha, S. (eds) Urban Ecology, Water Quality and Climate Change. Water Science and Technology Library, vol 84. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74494-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74494-0_11
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