a quantitative approach for analyzing the relationship between urban heat islands and land cover定量的方法分析城市热岛与土地覆盖的关系.pdfVIP

Remote Sens. 2012, 4, 3596-3618; doi:10.3390/rs4113596 OPEN ACCESS Remote Sensing ISSN 2072-4292 /journal/remotesensing Article A Quantitative Approach for Analyzing the Relationship between Urban Heat Islands and Land Cover Igor Ogashawara * and Vanessa da Silva Brum Bastos Remote Sensing Division (DSR), National Institute of Space Research (INPE), Avenida dos Astronautas, São José dos Campos-SP, 1758, Brazil; E-Mail: vsbrumb@ * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: igoroga@; Tel.: +55-12-3208-6484; Fax: +55-12-3208-6488. Received: 30 September 2012; in revised form: 12 November 2012 / Accepted: 12 November 2012 / Published: 20 November 2012 Abstract: With more than 80% of Brazilians living in cities, urbanization has had an important impact on climatic variations. São José dos Campos is located in a region experiencing rapid urbanization, which has produced a remarkable Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. This effect influences the climate, environment and socio-economic development on a regional scale. In this study, the brightness temperatures and land cover types from Landsat TM images of São José dos Campos from 1986, 2001 and 2010 were analyzed for the spatial distribution of changes in temperature and land cover. A quantitative approach was used to explore the relationships among temperature, land cover areas and several indices, including the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normali