A Study on Urban Impervious Surface Area and Its Relation with Urban Heat Island:Quanzhou City,China

A remote sensing study on the urban impervious surface and its relation with urban heat island has been carried out taking Quanzhou city of SE China as an example.The remotely-sensed data have been obtained from two Landsat TM images of 1989 and 1996.Ridd(1995) indicated that the impervious surface area(ISA) and the fractional vegetation cover(Fr) have an inversely relation in urban areas.Accordingly,we obtained the spatial patterns of the impervious surface area by calculating fractional vegetation cover derived from the NDVI.The study revealed that the impervious surface area of the study area increased significantly from 1989 to 1996,expanding mainly southeastwards.Furthermore,this paper discussed the quantitative relation between the impervious surface area and the urban heat islands.The land surface temperature has been obtained from band 6 of the Landsat TM images.Based on the regression analysis between the impervious surface area and the land surface temperature,it can be concluded that the impervious surface area has a direct response to the increase of the urban heat island phenomenon.