Urban heat island development during the last two decades in Porto Alegre, Brazil and its monitoring

Abstract

This paper describes the development of urban heat island during the last two decades in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Landsat TM images were used for this study and image processing steps were done using MATLAB and Erdas Imagine software packages for the successful monitoring of this urban phenomenon. It is found that there was a significant increase in the surface mean temperature and land use during this period. Reforested area showed significant decrease in land surface temperature.