GIS Remote Sensing | LST in Arcmap Model Builder

What is Land surface Temperature (LST)

Land Surface temperature is the skin temperature of the earth’s surface. LST Calculation requires thermal band imagery from the satellite. Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS imagery is free to download. Its thermal bands are Band-10 and Band-11.

Thermal Infrared sensors are used to calculate the temperature of the ground. There are many published researches that tells us the right way to calculate LST from thermal bands. (GIS Remote Sensing is a cheaper option for many scientists.)

Using Arcmap Modelbuilder

Here we will use the imagery of the Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS Satellite by using ArcGIS Desktop 10.6 software Modelbuilder. ModelBuilder is easy to validate/follow tool for GIS specialists for complex geospatial analysis.

Please note that the following method was taken from the following research paper:

“Effects of landscape composition and pattern on land surface temperature: An urban heat island study in the megacities of Southeast Asia”.

Estoque, R. C., Murayama, Y., & Myint, S. W. (2017). Effects of landscape composition and pattern on land surface temperature: An urban heat island study in the megacities of Southeast Asia. Science of the Total Environment, 577, 349-359. link

LST Calculation

In the below video, this algorithm was used to calculate LST in Degree Celcius (℃). If you need this Model-toolbox file, then please connect with me. Learn GIS Remote Sensing with me on my website.

𝐿𝑆𝑇(℃)= 𝑇𝐵/(1+(λ×𝑇𝐵/𝜌)𝑙𝑛∈)

∈ = 𝑚𝑃𝑣+𝑛

𝑃𝑣=[(𝑁𝐷𝑉𝐼−𝑁𝐷𝑉𝐼𝑚𝑖𝑛)/(𝑁𝐷𝑉𝐼𝑚𝑎𝑥−𝑁𝐷𝑉𝐼𝑚𝑖𝑛)]²

NDVI = ( 𝜌𝑁𝐼𝑅 – 𝜌𝑅𝐸𝐷)/ (𝜌𝑁𝐼𝑅 + 𝜌𝑅𝐸𝐷) Click here to follow the tutorial for NDVI

where TB is the Satellite Brightness Temperature (Band 10 and 11 of Landsat 8).

λ = wavelength of the emitted radiance(λ = 10.8 μm for Landsat 8 for band 10, λ should be 12.0 for band 11 [for simplicity, only the value of band-10 was used in the tutorial video]).

ρ = h×c/σ (1.438 × 10−2m K), σ = Boltzmann constant (1.38 × 10−23 J/K), h = Planck’s constant (6.626 × 10−34 Js), and c = velocity of light (2.998 × 108 m/s);

ε = Land surface emissivity

LST Uses

LST Calculation helps to find the heat centers on the land surface. Comparatively low-resolution satellites like MODIS can cover the temperature sensing of the whole globe. We need this for trend analysis. In Environmental studies, there are countless other uses of LST of Geospatial analysis. Including the trends for Climate Change and Global Warming.

Keywords:

GIS Remote Sensing, GIS Analyst