Geomatics-Based Surface Urban Heat Island Mapping and Analysis for Sustainable Urban Planning

Urbanization disrupts local thermal habitats and causes the Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) effect, which poses major environmental and public health problems in hyper-arid cities. In contrast, SUHI is derived from satellite remote sensing and quantifies surface temperature radiative anomalies rather than canopy-layer air temperatures related to atmospheric UHI. Using Landsat 9 OLI/TIRS imagery from July 2025, this study examines the spatial features of SUHI in Baghdad City, Iraq. A single-channel algorithm was used to extract Land Surface Temperature (LST) from the thermal data, and a Random Forest classifier was applied to LULC, which was classified into four classes. Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) was employed to find spatial clusters of surface areas with elevated temperature, which were then related to surface indices describing vegetation (NDVI), built-ups (NDBI), and water (NDWI). It was found that 52.89% of the study area came from the high and very high surface thermal-intensity distribution classes of the Iraqi regions, where the LST values ranged from 44 to 47°C and >47°C, respectively, with the highest percentage occurring in the central, west, and southwest areas of Baghdad. The Pearson correlation analysis indicated that a strong negative correlation exists between LST and NDVI (r =-0.73), a strong positive correlation between LST and NDBI (r = +0.65), and a moderate negative correlation between LST and NDWI (r =-0.55). The results describe the spatial characteristics of satellite-derived surface temperatures in Baghdad and serve as a geospatial foundation for investigating SUHI patterns in arid urban settings.