An assessment of satellite remotely-sensed land cover parameters in quantitatively describing the climatic effect of urbanization

Abstract

Abstract. The regional-scale climatic impact of urbanization is examined using two land cover parameters, fractional vegetation cover (Fr) and surface moisture availability (M0). The parameters are hypothesized to decrease as surface radiant temperature (T0) increases, forced by vegetation removal and the introduction of non-transpiring, reduced evaporating urban surfaces. Fr and M0 were derived from vegetation index and T0 data computed from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), and then correlated to a percentage of urban land cover obtained from a supervised classi®cation of Landsat TM imagery