Assessment of land use/land cover variations with temperature changes in the Baghdad city, Iraq

The current study is concerned with the city of Baghdad, which extends over an area of 889 km². It has suffered from rapid population growth in recent years, which has led to a decline in municipal services as well as a rise in the surface temperature in the summer. In this study, the variance was evaluated in the Spatio-temporal variability of land surface temperature (LST) using Landsat-8 satellite images 25, February 2016, 10 August 2016, 2 March 2018, 9 August 2018, 22 February 2021, and 8 August 2021. LST values and controlled land use/land cover (LULC) classification work was calculated using GIS 10.8 software. The maximum value recorded for the temperature was in the barren lands between 20.8° and 53.6° degrees Celsius, while in the vegetation it ranged from 14.9° to 42.15°. During the research period, the temperature difference between the lowest and maximum value in vegetation and water bodies was lower than built-up areas around 1.7°–3.7°, 6.9°-11.1° respectively and it was also lower than the bare lands about 5.9°–11.45°,11.3°-19.05°, respectively, showing that vegetation and water bodies had a favorable influence on lowering LST in the studied region. The maximum likelihood classification (MLC) method was used in the observed classification process, and high classification accuracy was obtained. The overall accuracy ranged from 95% to 99% and the kappa accuracy ranged from 0.94 to 0.99. The rate of increase in the area of vegetation during the study period between 2016 and 2021 was about 5.13%. The proportion of the area of residential areas increased by 12.95%, while the open land decreased by 15.64%, all of which made the study area environment warmer.