Spatio-temporal Assessment of Urban Heat Island Effects in Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan City Using Landsat Images

Alteration in climatic pattern has resulted to a steady decline in quality of life and the environment, especially in and around urbanized areas. These areas are faced with increasing surface temperature arising mostly from human activities and other natural sources; hence land surface temperature has become an important variable in global climate change studies. In this paper, Landsat TM/ETM imagery acquired between 1997 and 2013 were used to extract ground brightness temperature and land use/land cover change in Kuala Lumpur metropolis. The main objective of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of quantifying UHI effects, in space and time, using remote sensing data and, also, to find the relationship between UHI and land use change. Four land use types (forest, farmland, built-up area and water) were classified from the Landsat images using maximum likelihood classification technique. The result reveals that Greater KL experienced an increase in average temperature from 312.641°K to 321.112°K which was quite eminent with an average gain in surface temperature of 8.4717°K. During the period of investigation (1997–2013), generally high temperature is been experienced mostly in concentrated built-up areas, the less concentrated have a moderate to intermediate temperature. Again, the study also shows that low and intermediate temperature classes loss more spatial extent from 2,246.89 Km² to 1,164.53 Km² and 6,102.42 Km² to 3,013.63 Km² and a gain of 4,165.963 Km² and 307.098 Km² in moderate and high temperature respectively from 1997 to 2013. The results of this study may assist planners, scientists, engineers, demographers and other social scientists concerned about urban heat island to make decisions that will enhance sustainable environmental practices.