Land Surface Temperature in an Arid City: Assessing Spatio-temporal Changes

The sprawl of urban areas and its consequent alteration of the Earth’s surface lead to problems with rising temperatures. This research aims to assess the urban cold/heat island phenomenon and driving factors that currently affect the Land Surface Temperature (LST) pattern of a city in a desert environment (Tulum Valley, Argentina). We selected 50 points for the urban class and 49 points for the rural class. The LST data was obtained for cold and warm periods of the years 1988, 2000, 2010, and 2021. For each study year, the median (annual), minimum (of cold period), and maximum (of warm period) LST values were calculated in 90 × 90 m moving windows (3 × 3 pixels). As driving factors, we assessed vegetation areas, built-up, and bare soil areas, taking into account their spatial abundance (median values), and heterogeneity (standard deviation) in the same moving windows. The Tulum Valley behaved like an UCI in almost every year studied. In the urban class, the LST was positively affected by vegetation during the cold period, whereas in the rural class, it was explained by a negative relationship with vegetation and a positive one with built-up areas. In the urban class during the warm periods, LST had a negative relationship with heterogeneous areas of bare soil and vegetation. Conversely, an increase in built-up areas caused a rise in LST, both in urban and rural classes. Different drivers affected the LST pattern in the Tulum Valley; moreover, these drivers explained more variability in the rural than the urban class. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.