Detecting spatio-temporal changes in Baltimore, Maryland’s heat island with remote sensing imagery

Abstract

In the past century alone, society has continued to develop and urbanize, making research of the urban heat island (UHI) more important than ever. UHIs have a detrimental impact on human health and the natural environment as a result of increased land surface temperature, changes in precipitation patterns, and other weather related events. This study sought to determine the change and extent of Baltimore, Maryland’s UHI with Landsat 5 imagery. Imagery was collected in approximately 5 year intervals from 1985 to 2011 in order to determine how albedo, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), land cover, and land surface temperature (LST) changed during each time period. This study found no correlation between change in albedo and change in LST, a slightly negative correlation between change in NDVI and LST, and a positive correlation between land cover and LST in Baltimore’s UHI. This study also found that weather, particularly precipitation events occurring prior to the date the satellite image was captured, may have affected the analysis of extent and intensity of Baltimore’s UHI.