Josaphat Laboratory graduated Dr. Laras Tursilowati on 25 March 2013 with Ph.D thesis entitled “Impact of land use and land cover changes on the urban climate and environment studied with satellite observation, geographic information system and weather research forecast model”. Dr Laras is our student under JSPS Ronpaku Program from 2008 to 2013 period to get Ph.D title, and her affiliation is Indonesian Aerospace Agency (Lapan).
Abstract
Urban climate and urban environment are influenced by the interactions of various natural and anthropogenic factors. Among such factors, the changes in land use and land cover are especially significant in large cities in relation to the rapid pace of the population increase. Emissions of heat from urban surface materials cause temperature differences between urban and non-urban areas. This situation, often called the urban heat island (UHI), is due to the combined effects of low albedo and high heat capacity of anthropogenic materials, and can drastically alter the conditions of the near-surface atmosphere in the city area through the changes in absorption of solar radiation, evaporation rates, storage of heat and the turbulence and wind conditions. The objective of this study is to analyze the relation between the urban climate variables such as surface temperature, air temperature, and surface energy flux parameters and environmental variables such as the normalized difference vegetation index, Bowen ratio, and evaporative fraction in relation to the relatively long-term land use and land cover changes. The studied areas are large cities in Indonesia, namely, Jakarta, Bandung, and Semarang. The land cover and environmental analyses are carried out using the Landsat TM/ETM data, with the help of the geographic information system (GIS) and meteorological data. In order to simplify the combined use of a number of different data sets, the surface energy balance interface software (SEBALIS) has newly been developed on the basis of the Visual Basic platform. This approach has successfully led to the reduction of repetitive and complex tasks subsequently implemented with the existing data analysis and GIS platforms such as ER Mapper and ArcView GIS. Also, the weather research forecast (WRF) model has been effectively coupled to investigate the impact of urbanization on the changes in climate. Important aspects shown and confirmed in this study are that the reduction in vegetation coverage generally leads to noticeable increase in UHI, the radiation energy balance is remarkably dependent on the land coverage, and drought monitoring can be well implemented by analyzing the surface energy balance. As a whole, this study has shown that the comprehensive usage of the remote sensing, GIS, and climate modeling can be quite effective for the quantitative analysis of UHI and related phenomena in large city areas. In the future, these results are expected to be archived and applied for monitoring and controlling the urban climate and environmental by decision makers in large cities worldwide.