Spatiotemporal Investigation of Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) Using Landsat: Application on African Cities

The high rate of population growth and the expansion of urbanization have been affecting the environment, resulting in rising temperatures, decreasing green areas and vegetation land cover, and increasing urban impervious surfaces. This rapid urbanization has led to a series of environmental problems such as Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon. Investigating Surface Urban Heat Islands (SUHIs) has taken attention worldwide. Despite the unprecedented urbanization that has been experienced in many African cities, little attention has been given to SUHIs in Africa. This paper is dedicated to study the relationship between the spatial and temporal pattern of land use and land cover (LULC) and land surface temperature (LST) to analyze the characteristics of SUHI in four African cities: Casablanca (Morocco), Tunis (Tunisia), Kampala (Uganda), and Windhoek (Namibia). Our choice was based on the following criteria: location and size of the city, high population and urbanization rates, and its economic status. Therefore, Landsat time-series data were acquired during summers between 2000 and 2020 to monitor the formation of SUHI. The results have shown significantly strong correlations between LST and the built-up regions distribution (positive) and green space (negative) in the four cities. This study may provide significant information to policymakers to ease making mitigation strategies for the urban ecological restoration and creating new patterns for a sustainable urbanization.