This study investigated how underlying biophysical attributes affect the characterization of the Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) phenomenon using (and comparing) two statistical techniques: global regression and geographically weighted regression (GWR). Land surface temperature (LST) was calculated from Landsat 8 imagery for 20 July 2015 for the metropolitan areas of Austin and San Antonio, Texas. We sought to examine SUHI by relating LST to Lidar-derived terrain factors, land cover composition, and landscape pattern metrics developed using the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2011. The results indicate that (1) land cover composition is closely related to the SUHI effect for both metropolitan areas, as indicated by the global regression coefficients of building fraction and NDVI, with values of 0.29 and −0.74 for Austin, and 0.19 and −0.38 for San Antonio, respectively. The terrain morphology was also an indicator of the SUHI phenomenon, implied by the elevation (0.20 for Austin and 0.09 for San Antonio) and northness (0.20 for Austin and 0.09 for San Antonio); (2) the SUHI phenomenon of Austin on 20 July 2015 was affected by the spatial pattern of the land use and land cover (LULC), which was not detected for San Antonio; and (3) with a local determination coefficient higher than 0.8, GWR had higher explanatory power of the underlying factors compared to global regression. By accommodating spatial non-stationarity and allowing the model parameters to vary in space, GWR illustrated the spatial heterogeneity of the relationships between different land surface properties and the LST. The GWR analysis of SUHI phenomenon can provide unique information for site-specific land planning and policy implementation for SUHI mitigation.

Given the prominent position of academia in sustainability studies and sustainability science, it is natural to want to look to universities as models of (or keepers of knowledge about) sustainable practices—including practices related to energy consumption. Nevertheless, there is a long history of and literature on universities failing to implement their own sustainability initiatives. Apart from typical justifications for implementation failure that include budget constraints and financial infeasibility, one of the main obstacles that consistently keeps universities from achieving their own sustainability-related goals is a lack of enforcement. More precisely, universities tend to codify their sustainability-related goals in non-binding declarations that are voluntary. In that respect, failure to achieve a goal does not result in any sort of formal sanction. As such, universities are free to claim a commitment to sustainability in their public communications, without having to consistently and persistently demonstrate that commitment in practice. Situated on this backdrop, the present review paper aims to concisely and selectively stitch together three streams of literature: (1) the rationale for sustainability and, by extension, sustainable energy consumption, in higher education; (2) the current state of sustainability planning and its (in)efficacy in institutions of higher education; and (3) effective practices for reducing energy consumption at scales comparable to university campuses.