Land use/land cover (LULC) change with urbanization affects urban heat island (UHI). We selected the Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper images for year 2005 to retrieve land surface temperature (LST) and LULC types and assess the correlation between LULC and LST pattern in Nanjing, China. Daytime mean LST of LULC types in the metropolitan area decreases from industrial, high-density residential commercial, pavement roads, low-density residential commercial, and rural residential to water. UHI centers (over 20.18°C ) are located in two big stations, Zhonghua-Men Old City and main industrial zones. LULC pattern generally accords with UHI pattern and affects UHI pattern by artificial heat sources and thermal-biological variations of surface materials. The LST-NDVI index of pavement roads, high-density residential-commercial, rural residential, industrial, low-density residential commercial, forest grass, cultivated, and water body are 0.01, 0.101, 0.151, 0.262, 0.324, 0.987, 1.647, and 0.765, respectively. The...

Most studies are concerned with the cooling effect of urban greenery, but some have also revealed that some patches changed from normal temperature areas (NTAs) into high temperature areas (HTAs). Landsat TM images and ArcGIS software are used to analyze the HTA patterns in Nanjing, China. The HTAs’ lower limit temperature was defined as the 30.26 °C and the percentage of the HTAs in all greenery was 24.87%. The disturbance on the cooling effect existed but not evidently. The average impervious ratio (IR) and surface temperature (ST) of HTAs, respectively, were 3.76 times and higher 2.86 °C than those of NTAs. The structure of NTAs’ IR levels was extremely uneven but the HTAs’ were relatively even. However, the co-coefficient between the IR and ST in the whole greenery was small. Sampling analysis with the same ST and IR revealed that the complex environment in green buffer affected temperature differences; The adjacent HTAs, with its 89.78% in the study area, largely along the green patch, were far more than independent HTAs and presented a ring shape. Thus, the significantly heterogeneous urban environment inevitably resulted in diverse factors forming HTAs.