Monitoring the impacts of spatio-temporal land-use changes on the regional climate of city Faisalabad, Pakistan

The eco-environment in city Faisalabad has attained much consideration due to rapid urbanization and land-use changes in past few years. The purpose of this study is to analyse the impacts of land-use changes on regional climate by linking them with temperature and precipitation trend using spatio-temporal analysis and statistical method. Geospatial and remote sensing technique provides essential tools which can be used to interpret the land-use changes. Spatio-temporal land-use changes from 1985 to 2016 were analysed using unsupervised image classification technique. Land-use maps were classified into three main classes, namely agriculture, built-up and open land. The results indicate that agricultural land has continuously decreased by 37.79-10.23%, built-up area has increased by 33.07- 88.19% and open land has decreased by 29.13-1.5% from 1985 to 2016. Statistical analysis indicates that transformation of agriculture and open land into built-up land has led to rise in temperatures and annual rainfall trend in Faisalabad. Average increase in annual T-Min, T-Max and T-Mean was 1.2, 0.3 and 0.7 degrees C, respectively from 1985 to 2016. Overall contribution of urban warming to total annual T-Min, T-Max and T-Mean was 12.31%, 1.95% and 5.42%, respectively. Annual rainfall is also increasing and it has increased by 120 mm from 1985 to 2016. Results indicate that temporal variations of annual temperature and rainfall are consistent with land-use changes in city Faisalabad, and significant correlation coefficients were found between them. It is recommended that this type of study is helpful for urban planners to control the urbanization properly especially in larger cities of Pakistan.