Measurement of land surface temperature and its relation to vegetation cover: a case study of Kolkata municipal corporation

Urbanisation is a global phenomenon that leads to rapid change in land use and land cover. This change significantly alters surface material from pervious to impervious concretized material. Changes in surface material introduce hike in surface temperature. Biological resources such as vegetation not only act as a sink to CO2 but also help to reduce surface temperature by providing shades to surface materials. To understand such relation a study has been conducted on land surface temperature of Kolkata based on landsat satellite data. In this study, land surface temperature is measured from thermal image of using landsat Thematic Mapper satellite sensor. To calculate land surface temperature a method developed by Artis and Carnahan is adopted. The surface temperature shows that temperature is higher in north Kolkata in comparison to south Kolkata. In the process to calculate surface temperature, normalised temperature vegetation index (NDVI) has also been calculated using Near Infrared band and red band of the same satellite. The NDVI shows a negative relationship with surface temperature.