URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ANALYSIS USING LANDSAT IMAGES OVER SEOUL, KOREA

The Urban Environmental Quality (UEQ) indicates a complex and various parameters resulting from both human and natural factors in an urban area. Vegetation, climate, air quality, and the urban infrastructure may interact to produce effects in an urban area. There are relationships among air pollution, vegetation, and degrading environmental the urban heat island (UHI) effect. This study investigates the application of multi-spectral remote sensing data from the Landsat ETM and TM sensors for the mapping of air quality and UHI intensity in Seoul from 2000 to 2006 in fine resolution (30m) using the emissivity-fusion method. The Haze Optimized Transform (HOT) correction approach has been adopted for atmospheric correction on all bands except thermal band. The general UHI values (${\Delta}(T_{urban}-T_{rural})$) are 8.45 (2000), 9.14 (2001), 8.61 (2002), and $8.41^{\circ}C$ (2006), respectively. Although the UHI values are similar during these years, the spatial coverage of "hot" surface temperature (>$24^{\circ}C$) significantly increased from 2000 to 2006 due to the rapid urban development. Furthermore, high correlations between vegetation index and land surface temperature were achieved with a correlation coefficients of 0.85 (2000), 0.81 (2001), 0.84(2002), and 0.89 (2006), respectively. Air quality is shown to be an important factor in the spatial variation of UEQ. Based on the quantifiable fine resolution satellite image parameters, UEQ can promote the understanding of the complex and dynamic factors controlling urban environment.