Monitoring urban heat island in the Eastern region of Thailand and its mitigating through greening city and urban agriculture

Abstract

Land Use/Land Cover change in the Eastern of Thailand was explored which related with the characteristic of urban heat island by analyzing and estimating the visible and near-infrared and thermal of Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon that covered agricultural, industrial, and urban areas in the eastern region by using climate models in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and RS (Remote Sensing) data.  It integrated land surface temperature (LST) with estimated by single-channel algorithm for Landsat satellite data and ground-based weather stations in the years of 2006, 2011 and 2017. There are many of urban communities and industries located spread throughout the region especially Chon Buri, Rayong, and Chachengsao provinces. Buildings and its surfaces and transport systems which constructed by brick, concrete and asphalt act as enormous heat storage. It accumulated the human and industrial activities of urban areas that had been caused urban zone to higher temperature than the surrounding countryside area. From the study, many cities in the region was significant increased in temperature.

The research found LST and UHI of Eastern Region including urban and industrial areas was higher temperature when compared to the surrounding agricultural areas. These different temperatures cause the formation of UHI. This study recognizes that the level of LST and UHI province increased to be the strongest in 5 provinces: Chon Buri, Prachin Buri, Sa Kaeo and Chachoengsao. UHI effect is a significant factor linking to anthropogenic sources, to protect the environment and to mitigate the UHI effect. There involved in different environmental strategies, one of the important strategy is a greening city with increasing green cover surface area in cities. The green infrastructure methods and techniques, urban agriculture is an alternative mitigation which currently being considered. Urban Agriculture is considered as an opportunity to mitigate the environmental impacts, because, urban agriculture can play a strong role in enhancing food security by providing agricultural products to the residents of the city, greening the city and improving the urban climate.