THERMAL ENVIRONMENT OF RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITIES OVER A COAST AREA IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA

Abstract. The characters of the residential communities over Tong’an District of Xiamen City in thermal environment as well as in biophysical factors were investigated mainly based on the Lansat-8 OLI/TIRS Collection 2 Level-2 products. Specifically, the surface temperature product was used in measuring thermal environment, and the surface reflectance product was used to derive biophysical factors through the tasseled cap transformation as well as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Among the four types of residential community, the old community in urban area was generally lower in NDVI and in the Wetness component and therefore had higher surface temperature. Varied relationships of surface temperature with biophysical factors among four types were observed, which also demonstrated seasonal variation. At the same time, the preliminary investigation showed that the residential communities located in rural-urban fringe and a small portion of village communities had confronted with problems in thermal environment as well as in surface biophysical conditions. Furthermore, limitations of this study were discussed, mainly in spatial resolution and temporal representativeness of the Landsat-8 OLI/TIRS data, in biophysical components derived from the multi-spectral reflectance without depicting actual landscape, and in no consideration for the background of individual community. As the whole district covers wide and complex territory along with different local climate types, more investigations in details are required.