Temporal and Spatial Variance of Land Use and Urban Heat Island in Suzhou City

By selecting Suzhou city as an experimental area,the paper classified underlying land surface types and retrieved land surface temperature from Landsat 5 TM images in 1986 and 2004 separately.Then the spatial and temporal variation of underlying surfaces and urban heat island effect were discussed,furthermore the effect of land use change to urban heat island was lastly studied.Research results show that the significant expansion of city area and dramatic changes of land use types have been taken place in the past 20 years,characterized by high-intensity conversion from water and vegetation area to impervious surface.Besides,the urban heat island distribution has expanded from old city area to the surroundings with the intensity rising from 3.12° to 4.76°,which exists a clear corresponding relationship with the urban expansion and land use change.