Thermal Remote Sensing: A tool to Determine Temporal Land Surface Temperature in Hawassa City, Ethiopia

This investigation was conducted for the estimation of the temporal land surface temperature value using thermal remote sensing of Landsat-8 (OLI) Data in Hawassa City Administration, Ethiopia. Satellite datasets of Landsat-7 (ETM+) on 22nd March 2002 and Landsat-8 (OLI) on 22nd March 2019 were taken for this study. Different algorisms were used to estimate the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index threshold from the Red and Near-Infrared band and the ground earth's surface emissivity esteem is legitimately recovered from the thermal infrared by coordinating with the outcome got from MODIS information. The land use land cover map of the city was prepared with better accuracy using the on-screen classification technique. The spatial distribution of surface temperature of the city ranged from 6.62°C to 22.54°C with a mean of 14.58°C and a standard deviation of 11.25 in the year of March 22nd 2002. The LST result derived from Landsat 8 for March 22nd, 2019, ranges from 11.97°C to 35.5°C with a mean of 23.735 °C and a standard deviation of 16.64. In both years the higher LST values correspond to built-up/settlement and bare/open lands of the city; whereas, lower LST values were observed in vegetation (trees/woodlot, shrubs, and grass forested) areas. Urban expansion (built-up area roads, and other impervious surfaces), decline in vegetation levels due to deforestation, and increasing population density. Increasing evergreen tree and green space coverage, designing and developing city parks, and rehabilitating the existing degraded natural environments are among the recommended strategy to reduce the rate of LST