Remote sensing of urban micro-climate with special reference to Urban Heat Island island using Landsat thermal data

Remote sensing studies have shown that urban areas have unique environmental, climatic, land use/cover characteristics as a result of intense anthropogenic activities. Consequently, urban areas have developed distinct microclimate and elevated temperatures. Thermal remote sensing data has been widely used to study these characteristics. In this study, an attempt has been made to review the studies involving Landsat remote sensing dataset for investigating land surface temperature. Landsat is oldest finer resolution thermal dataset, which has been effectively used in mapping and analysis of land surface temperature, urban heat island and urban microclimate. Since 1978, it has been providing thermal data through Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) sensors.