Impact of Land Use–Land Cover Changes on Urban Heat Island Dynamics in a Rapidly Growing Mid-Sized Indian City

Rapid urbanization has induced substantial changes in land use and land cover (LULC), leading to pronounced modifications in the thermal characteristics of urban environments and, consequently, local climatic conditions. Although the impacts of urbanization on urban heat island (UHI) dynamics have been extensively investigated in large metropolitan regions,smaller and rapidly growing urban centers such as Kharagpur remain comparatively underexplored. This study assesses the influence of LULC transitions on the UHI phenomenon over Kharagpur, including the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur campus, which has undergone accelerated urban expansion and surface transformation over the past two and a half decades.
Multi-temporal Landsat 5, 7, and 8 satellite imagery were used to analyze spatiotemporal variations in LULC, land surface temperature (LST), and UHI characteristics during the period 2000–2025. LULC classes were generated using supervised classification with the Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) algorithm. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) were employed to characterize surface properties and to estimate LST, enabling the identification and quantification of UHI intensity.
The results reveal a marked expansion of built-up areas, increasing from 26% to 55% across Kharagpur and from 6.7% to 42.3% within the IIT Kharagpur campus, primarily at the expense of barren and vegetated land. A significant and spatially coherent increase in LST is observed over the last 25 years, with pronounced UHI hotspots consistently associated with built-up and barren surfaces. The findings demonstrate that rapid urban growth and LULC transitions play a critical role in modulating the local thermal environment. This study provides valuable insights for sustainable urban planning and the development of heat mitigation strategies in emerging and mid-sized urban centers.
Keywords: LULC, Land Surface Temperature, Urban Heat Island, Landsat