THE EFFECTS OF LAND COVER CHANGES ON LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURES

Abstract. The aims of this study are to detect the land-cover maps and land surface temperatures using Landsat time series and analyse the relation between the land-cover and land surface temperatures (LST) and their changes in time. For these purposes initially, land-cover maps were generated rapidly using land cover indices and automatic thresholding. The land-cover indices used in this study are Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI), Index-Based Built-Up Index (IBI), Modified Bare-Soil Index (MBI), Plastic-Mulched Landcover Index (PMLI), Plastic Greenhouse Index (PGI) and Normalized Burn Ratio Thermal (NBRT) Index. Then, using the thermal bands of Landsat satellites, LST maps were created. Finally, the land-cover and LST changes were examined. The Kumluca district of Antalya, which includes extensive greenhouse areas as well as urban, vegetation, bareland, water, was selected as study area. Between the years 2004 and 2021, within the study area the greenhouse areas increased significantly, the urban area expanded and some areas exposed to fire, especially the fire in 2016. Therefore, the images within this time period were used. The overall accuracies for land-cover maps were computed as 76%, 79%, 79%, 89% and 86% for the years 2004, 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021, respectively. The results obtained from the study reveal that while greenhouse and urban areas were increased, the vegetation areas were decreased significantly within this time period. In addition, generally increases were observed for LST values of all land-cover classes and the highest LST values were detected for the burned, bareland, urban and greenhouse areas.