Correlation between vegetation and surface temperature in Mumbai metropolitan region
- Vol.18, Issue 3
- New Delhi Institute of Town Planners 2021
- 31-45p.
This study attempts to identify hot spots in the Mumbai Metropolitan region and to assess its relationship with vegetation. Remote sensing data is used to investigate the relation and contrary to the general perception of downtown areas having higher temperature compared to its suburbs, it was found that although much of the island city is densely urbanized, the Land Surface Temperature was not as high as it was in some of the Sahyadri hills to the East, a peri-urban area. This is likely to be due to the strong cooling effect of the surrounding Arabian Sea and the fact that when the hills get denuded, their black basaltic rock is often exposed. It was seen that when the hilly terrain was well vegetated and showed good Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), such as in Tungareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary, Matheran and Prabalgad, the LST was very low. Most of the remaining mountains, both of Navi Mumbai and further north towards Kalyan, having very low or minimal vegetation, and were very hot. Of the built-up areas, it was noticed that informal settlements and places that had sheds / factories with very little gap between buildings were exceptionally warmer. However, even among informal settlements, the older ones showed less heat than the newer ones. This study has only considered daytime LST