Abstract
Urbanization is a human activity that changes the surface of the earth and degrades the surroundings of major cities all over the world. The problem is more acute in many developing cities with a high population and rapid economic growth. The present study focuses on the effect of land use/land cover (LULC) on the land surface temperature (LST) in Sonipat district, Haryana India. The LULC derived from multispectral satellite data of two periods, 2011 and 2021, indicated a significant increase in urban areas by (3%) and barren and fallow land by (7%), whereas crop land has decreased by (11%) and water bodies have remained the same, in comparison with 2011. The LST, derived from a thermal infrared sensor, showed an overall increase in LST by 5 °C from 2011 to 2021. The results also showed that there was a significant LST difference across the LULC units. Pearson’s correlation analysis results showed an inverse correlation between LST and NDVI across urban areas and other land use classes, whereas a positive correlation over water bodies were observed in the study area. Therefore, LST and its relationship with NDVI via LULC, is a key parameter to investigate the thermal glitches in an urban ecosystem. This can be adopted as a useful tool for analyzing the environmental influence on the ecological unit.