Abstract
In this research, the effects of Covid-19 lockdown and limitations on human activities were investigated on urban heat islands. The multi-temporal images which were taken by the Landsat-8 OLI sensor in the spring 2017–2021 were used. For investigating the effects of lockdown in the spring of 2020, the status of surface urban heat island (SUHI) maps during the same period of lockdown in the three years before and the following year have been examined. The proposed method in this paper consists of two main steps: (1) producing the SUHI maps using the rule-based analysis of land surface temperature (LST), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and land use/land cover (LULC) maps and (2) quantitatively analyzing the behavioral changes in the SUHIs during Covid-19 lockdown and comparing their changes with the previous and subsequent years. The obtained results of performing the proposed post-classification change detection confirm that applying the lockdown led to changes in the area percentage of high, medium and low SUHI classes by −17.61%, + 4.8% and +12.8%, respectively. Reducing the restrictions in 2021 caused an increase again in the area of high SUHI class by +18.87% and a decrease in the areas of medium and low classes. Change analysis considering LULC object types reveals that the area percentage of high SUHI class in built up is decreased by −7.48% in 2020 compared to its average of three years before lockdown (which is 6.1% more than decreasing in vegetation cover). In addition, the analysis of LST and NDVI obtained from Landsat-8 satellite images in the years 2017 to 2021 reveals that the Covid-19 lockdown applied in spring 2020 caused a decrease of −22.52 in LST values and an increase of +0.103 in NDVI compared to the average of its last three years.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
References
Achmad A, Zainuddin, Muftiadi M (2019) The relationship between land surface temperature and water index in the urban area of a tropical city. In: IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. [place unknown]. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/365/1/012013
Ali G, Abbas S, Qamer FM, Wong MS, Rasul G, Irteza SM, Shahzad N (2021) Environmental impacts of shifts in energy, emissions, and urban heat island during the COVID-19 lockdown across Pakistan. J Clean Prod. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.125806
Alqasemi AS, Hereher ME, Kaplan G, Al-Quraishi AMF, Saibi H (2021) Impact of COVID-19 lockdown upon the air quality and surface urban heat island intensity over the United Arab Emirates. Sci Total Environ. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144330
Avdan U, Jovanovska G (2016) Algorithm for automated mapping of land surface temperature using LANDSAT 8 satellite data. J Sensors. https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/1480307
Bayat S, Tabib Mahmoudi F (2021) Post-classification urban heat island change detection based on multi-temporal satellite images. J Indian Soc Remote Sens. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-021-01437-z
Becchetti L, Conzo G, Conzo P, Salustri F (2022) Understanding the heterogeneity of COVID-19 deaths and contagions: the role of air pollution and lockdown decisions. J Environ Manage. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.114316
Chudnovsky A, Ben-Dor E, Saaroni H (2004) Diurnal thermal behavior of selected urban objects using remote sensing measurements. Energy Build. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2004.01.052
Depietri Y, Renaud FG, Kallis G (2012) Heat waves and floods in urban areas: a policy-oriented review of ecosystem services. Sustain Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-011-0142-4
El Kenawy AM, Lopez-Moreno JI, McCabe MF, Domínguez-Castro F, Peña-Angulo D, Gaber IM, Alqasemi AS, Al Kindi KM, Al-Awadhi T, Hereher ME et al (2021) The impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on surface urban heat island changes and air-quality improvements across 21 major cities in the Middle East. Environ Pollut. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2021.117802
Gordon A, Simondson D, White M, Moilanen A, Bekessy SA (2009) Integrating conservation planning and landuse planning in urban landscapes. Landsc Urban Plan. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2008.12.011
Hadibasyir HZ, Rijal SS, Sari DR (2020) Comparison of land surface temperature during and before the emergence of Covid-19 using Modis Imagery in Wuhan City, China. Forum Geogr. https://doi.org/10.23917/forgeo.v34i1.10862
Han JY, Baik JJ, Lee H (2014) Urban impacts on precipitation. Asia-Pacific J Atmos Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13143-014-0016-7
Karnieli A, Agam N, Pinker RT, Anderson M, Imhoff ML, Gutman GG, Panov N, Goldberg A (2010) Use of NDVI and land surface temperature for drought assessment: merits and limitations. J Clim. https://doi.org/10.1175/2009JCLI2900.1
Li H, Zhou Y, Li X, Meng L, Wang X, Wu S, Sodoudi S (2018) A new method to quantify surface urban heat island intensity. Sci Total Environ. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.11.360
O’Malley C, Piroozfarb PAE, Farr ERP, Gates J (2014) An investigation into minimizing Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects: a UK perspective. Energy Procedia 62:72–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2014.12.368
Parida BR, Bar S, Kaskaoutis D, Pandey AC, Polade SD, Goswami S (2021) Impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown on land surface temperature, aerosol, and urban heat in Europe and North America. Sustain Cities Soc. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.103336
Pavlidou E, van der Meijde M, van der Werff H, Hecker C (2019) Time series analysis of land surface temperatures in 20 earthquake casesworldwide. Remote Sens. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11010061
Richards DR, Edwards PJ (2018) Using water management infrastructure to address both flood risk and the urban heat island. Int J Water Resour Dev. https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2017.1357538
Roshan G, Sarli R, Grab SW (2021) The case of Tehran’s urban heat island, Iran: impacts of urban ‘lockdown’ associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Sustain Cities Soc. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.103263
Roshan G, Sarli R, Fitchett JM (2022) Urban heat island and thermal comfort of Esfahan City (Iran) during COVID-19 lockdown. J Clean Prod 352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.131498
Sharifi A, Amini J (2015) Forest biomass estimation using synthetic aperture radar polarimetric features. J Appl Rem Sens 9(1):097695. https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JRS.9.097695
Sharifi A, Amini J, Tateishi R (2016) Estimation of forest biomass using multivariate relevance vector regression. Photogramm Eng Remote Sensing 82(1):41–49. https://doi.org/10.14358/PERS.83.1.41
Streutker DR. 2003. Satellite-measured growth of the urban heat island of Houston, Texas. Remote Sens Environ. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0034-4257(03)00007-5
Weng Q (2009) Thermal infrared remote sensing for urban climate and environmental studies: methods, applications, and trends. ISPRS J Photogramm Remote Sens. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2009.03.007
Yang L, Qian F, Song D, Zheng K (2016) Research on urban heat-island effects. Procedia Eng J 169:11–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2016.10.002
Zhan W, Chen Y, Zhou J, Wang J, Liu W, Voogt J, Zhu X, Quan J, Li J (2013) Disaggregation of remotely sensed land surface temperature: literature survey, taxonomy, issues, and caveats. Remote Sens Environ. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2012.12.014
Funding
This work was supported by Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University under grant number 4943.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Nojavan, M., Tabib Mahmoudi, F. Surface Urban Heat Islands changes analysis considering the effects of Covid-19 lockdown. Nat Hazards 120, 5129–5140 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-024-06423-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-024-06423-5