URBANIZATION AND ITS IMPACT ON LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE CHANGES USING LANDSAT IMAGE IN DAKHLA CITY, MOROCCO

This work is part of a national strategy for sustainable urban development to offer more rational information for urban planning and help regional planners in appropriate land use planning and sustainable development policies. This paper investigates the effects of urbanization on land surface temperature LST variation of Dakhla city (Morocco), using two sensors (Thematic Mapper (TM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI)). Images are also used to analyse the urban landscape and their impact on the thermal environment using the processing of Landsat satellite images over the 1984–2018 periods. The results show that the urban landscape grew by almost 85.79% which may be explained by the increase of urban population and economic development respectably Moreover, these results indicate that the higher land surface temperature (LST) is observed in the urban areas, whereas the lowest in vegetal areas in this period of study. This study reveals a positive correlation between the urban land expansion and LST, which affirms that LST is affected positively by the urban land expansion.