Relationship Among Fractional Vegetation Cover, Land Use and Urban Heat Island Using Landsat 8 in Taipei, Taiwan

Urban area becomes higher than surrounding areas in temperature due to the increasingly more man-made items in the city, which ultimately leads to the effect of urban heat island (UHI). The affecting factors are considerable for the UHI and it’s therefore significantly crucial to analyze the influence on green land and phenomenon of UHI from the land use in the cities. In this paper, satellite remote sensing technology is applied along with the satellite image data of Landsat 8 in 2015 to calculate the Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC) and value of land surface heat of Taipei City within Taiwan. It’s concluded that FVC is insufficient and the intensity of heat island is higher in Taipei City, showing negative correlation. The average value of FVC is 28.25% and the average intensity of land use is approximately 1.87 °C. The most serious is the commercial and industrial land use in special use district with FVC <30%; no UHI is found for national park and scenic area with FVC both high than 35%. FVC for green land of park, which is the most effective element to restrain the heat environment, is <30%, however, the intensity of UHI reaches to +1.36 °.C This research could serve as the reference for the urban design and the spread control of UHI in the future.