Study on the Effects of Land cover Changes on Surface Albedo and Surface Temperature in Bangladesh Using Remote Sensing and GIS

Abstract

Dynamic changes in Earth’s land cover characteristics and associated temporally evolving biophysical surface properties, as well astheir ultimate impacts on surface radiative (surface albedo) and climatic properties (land surface temperature), have been studied. Thestudy area includes a part of south–western Bangladesh covering a period of about twenty years from 1988 – 2011. The widely usedSurface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) has been applied in conjunction with satellite–derived radiativemeasurements. Relatively important land use types such as water, soil, sand, settlement, shrimp farm, forest and agricultural crophave been considered. Feature type conversion of parameters i.e Normalized Difference of Vegetation Index (NDVI), surface albedoand land surface temperature have been noticed over the area under the present study. The highest surface albedo as well as surfacetemperature value has been noticed over the sandy area. Analysis revealed increases of surface temperature by about 1 °C and 3 °Cfor land cover conversion from (i) crop to settlement and (ii) water to soil, respectively. All other categories of land cover conversiongenerally experience decreases in surface temperature. Spatial vegetation coverage and amount of soil moisture play a dominant rolein the radiative as well as climatic properties.