Remote Sensing Analysis of Kuwait City´s Thermal Environment

Satellite-derived thermal information over urban areas offers and attractive and inexpensive method which have been utilized in diverse studies including land cover classification, energy flux interactions, and as input for models of urban surface atmosphere exchange. In this study, multitemporal Landsat TM imagery are analyzed for the dependence of energy fluxes on the urban surface properties in Kuwait City located in an arid environments. Thermal imagery is used in conjunction with multispectral imagery to interpret the distribution of surface temperatures in the context of endmember abundances estimated by spectral mixture analysis. In addition, the changes in the thermal properties over several years are evaluated for the city. Scatterplots of surface temperature and vegetation fractions define the physical limits imposed by the vegetation cover, soil water content, and different combinations of surface materials in Kuwait City.