Changing trends of land surface temperature in relation to land use/cover around thermal power plant in Singrauli district, Madhya Pradesh, India

• Published in: Spatial information research (Online) 2017, 25(6), 99, pp.769-777
• Main Authors: Kumari, Maya, Sarma, Kiranmay
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Database Management; Earth and Environmental Science; Geographical Information Systems/Cartography; Geography; Remote Sensing/Photogrammetry; 공학일반
• ISSN: 2366-3286; 2366-3294
• DOI: 10.1007/s41324-017-0142-2

India’s energy capital—Singrauli, has conglomeration of various thermal power plants and operational coal mines. Earlier, the area was densely forested, rich in biodiversity and home to various tribal communities. In the last decade, the area has been exploited by the private sector for setting up large scale power generation plants. The land use and its pattern and land surface temperature (LST) were studied for the Sasan Ultra Mega Thermal Power Plant covering an area of 10 km 2 for 3 years—2005, 2010 and 2015, respectively. Chronologically, the year 2005 is the phase of pre-establishment of the thermal power plant; the year 2010 specifies the construction phase and 2015 is the operational phase. Landsat ETM and Landsat 8 data of remote sensing system were used for this study. The land use/cover (LULC) study shows a significant decrease in the forest cover and barren rocky land, and a dramatic expansion in vegetation and wastelands. These changes in LULC have together widened the range of LST with an overall rise of 6.69 °C and an overall decline in the NDVI value from the year 2005 to 2015. The results of Pearson’s correlation analysis depict an inverse co-relationship between LST and NDVI for the study area. Therefore, LST and NDVI are two important parameters to study the metropolitan ecosystem and can be used as an effective tool for evaluating environmental influence on ecosystems.