The Investigation of Urbanization and Urban Heat Island in Beijing Based on Remote Sensing

As the capital of China, Beijing has become a world city after decades of development. It is necessary and meaningful to have a comprehensive investigation of the urban situation in Beijing. In addition, with the development and widely applied in urban studies, the remote sensing technology was put into use as a significant tool in this study which including DMSP-OLS and Landsat TM/ETM. This study was made up with two aspects: the urbanization investigation and the urban heat island effect survey. For the first part, the investigation was carried out by the correlation analysis with the official statistics and the night time light times series images from DMSP-OLS. Another aspect is the urban heat island effect survey, the Landsat TM/ETM data in 1995 and 2009 were processed to provide the NDVI and LST in the study region. By using the correlation analysis and regression analysis, the comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of urban heat island in Beijing can be got.