NDVI and Land Surface Temperature Spatio-Temporal Relationship: Al Taif, Saudi Arabia, as a Case Study

A key factor in different research fields, environmental and global change studies being two examples, is land surface temperature (LST). Earth - atmosphere interaction is the key parameter of the physics processes of the earth. LANDSAT 8 and LANDSAT 5 from LANDSAT series, have resulted in a great number of possibilities to investigate land processes with the use of remote sensing. This piece of research attempts to estimate LST over Al Taif city, Saudi Arabia, using LANDSAT Thermal Infrared Sensor data as a response to lack of meteorological station (one meteorological station in Al Taif). Variability of retrieved LST has been studied in terms of values of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for a multiplicity of types of land cover, and in accordance with the Landsat visible and NIR channels. A procedure that makes use of both visible and near infrared bands has been used to estimate Land Surface Emissivity (LSE), upon which rests the application of the method. This studys focus is to develop a method that processes ERDAS IMAGINE images using band 10 data LANDSAT 8 thermal imagery and band 6 LANDSAT 5 thermal imagery. Findings indicate high LST in built-up areas of the Metropolitan area and low LST in areas with a lot of vegetation cover and water bodies. This study has revealed that NDVI and LST negatively correlate in the area studied. The results show that, with decrease of (LST), there seems to be an increase of vegetation cover (VC). Decrease in vegetation cover, however, seems to be pronounced with increase of (LST). The evidence from this study suggests that, in areas with the highest temperature reaching 49C, vegetation is absent. Yet, a dense vegetation cover was found in areas with temperature as low as 12C.