Technical Document: Using EnviroAtlas Data and Remote-Sensing to
Identify Locations for Urban Heat Island Abatement
This document was written to accompany the EnviroAtlas use case: Using EnviroAtlas to Identify
Locations for Urban Heat Island Abatement.
Data Sources
Weather Underground: https://www.wunderground.com/historv/
1.	Historical air temperatures for reference location at
Portland International Airport
USGS Earth Explorer: http://earthexplorer.uses.gov/
2.	Landsat 8 thermal infrared cloud-free images for summer
dates in 2013, 2014 and 2015 were downloaded from USGS
Earth Explorer. Seven were included in the study.
Table 1. The imagery for seven dates shown in this table were
included in the creation of the UHI Index.
USGS File Name
Date
Year
Time
(UTC)
Day/Night
Min Temp
(deg F)
Max Temp
(deg F)
LC80460282013184LGN00
3-Ju 1-13
2013
18:58
Day
60
85
LC80460282014187LGN00
6-Ju 1-14
2014
18:55
Day
63
88
LC80460282015190LGN00
9-Ju 1-15
2015
18:55
Day
62
87
LC80460282013216LGN00
4-Aug-13
2013
18:57
Day
61
89
LC80460282014219LGN00
7-Aug-14
2014
18:55
Day
57
82
LC80460282013232LGN00
20-Aug-13
2013
18:57
Day
57
83
LC80460282015238LGN00
26-Aug-15
2015
18:55
Day
55
90
EnviroAtlas: https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas
3.	Portland, OR Meter-scale Urban Land Cover
4.	Estimated percent of tree cover within 26m of a road
edge
5.	Boundaries for US Census 2010 Block Groups for Portland
OR
6.	Population over 70 years old
7.	Population under 13 years old
Portland's Metro Data Resource Center:
http://www.civicapps.org/datasets
8.	Streets (Region)
9.	Neighborhood Organizations
National Hydrography Dataset for Oregon: http://nhd.usgs.gov/data.html
10.	Streams and Rivers from "NHDArea" shapefile
11.	Lakes and Ponds from "NHDWaterbody" shapefile
Landsat 8
Land Cover
Companion document to Using EnviroAtlas to Identify Locations for Urban Heat Island Abatement.

-------
Methods
1. From USGS EarthExplorer, use multiple criteria to select Landsat 8 scenes to include in the
analysis:
a.	High maximum air temperature at reference location of Portland International airport
(according to Weather Underground's historical record),
b.	Low percent cloud cover over image,
c.	Complete coverage over the study area, and
d.	Collection at the same time of day.
Starch Criteria Summary isnowi
Clear Criteria
Q
' httftt -' • ' Ui9i.gOV
	P • fl C [ EE EaithEnplorer





X

	
| Result oeeons
seaicn nom;|mmfflaryyy» fgio: ImmWym ~]1
Loom Reqttioi ryn FeedbatH HiiIb |
1. Enter Search Criteria
To narrow your search area type in an address or
place name enter coordinates or click the map to
define your search area (for advanced map tools, view
the help documentation), and/or choose a date range
Download Landsat 8 imagery from USGS EarthExplorer.
2. In QGIS, use the Semi-Automatic Classification Plugin
a. Apply DOS-1 Atmospheric Correction, yielding an image of brightness temperature for
band 10, which contains the thermal infrared information.
(B i^i	Semi-Automatic Classification Plugin	^ ^
Download images	Tools ~I Preprocessing	Postprocessing m Band calc	Band set ^ Batch	S >
$ Landsat	Sentinel-2	ASTER	Clip multiple rasters	Split raster bands ^ PCA kti Vector to raster





Directory containing Landsat bands

a
Select MTL file (if not in Landsat directory)

c

	t Brightness temperature in Celsius



~ Apply D0S1 atmospheric correction
Use NoData value (image has black border) | 0
0

	J Perform pansharpening (Landsat 7 or 8)



Create Band set and use Band set tools


Satellite Date (YYYY-MM-DD)
Sun elevation Earth sun distance


Band RADIANCE MULT
RADIANCE ADD REFLECTANCE MUU REFLECTANCE
1



0






1
In QGIS, unpackage the Landsat 8 imagery to yield the brightness temperature for
band 10.
Companion document to Using EnviroAtlas to Identify Locations for Urban Heat Island Abatement.

-------
3. In ArcGIS, create a raster of emissivity corresponding to land cover
a. Reclassify Portland lm land cover TIF to lm emissivity, using the following emissivity
values from Setturu, Rajan and Ramachandra (2013):
Table 1. Surface emissivity values by land cover type, taken from Setturu et al. (2013).

Land Cover
Emissivity
1
Built-up / Impervious Surfaces
0.946
2
Non-Crop Vegetation
0.985
3
Water
0.990
4
Agriculture
0.974
5
Other
0.950
b.	Aggregate cells, with resulting 30m cells having the mean emissivity of the original lm
cells.
c.	The result is a 30m raster of emissivity, with grid snapped to Landsat raster imagery.
4.	In ArcGIS, estimate land surface temperature
a.	Use raster calculator to adjust at-satellite brightness temperature (Kelvin) to land
surface temperature (LST; Kelvin).
From Congedo (2014):
LST = b / ( 1 + ( 10.8 * b / 14380 ) * ln(a))
where a is the emissivity raster and b is the brightness temperature raster.
b.	Convert units from Kelvin to Fahrenheit.
5.	In ArcGIS, calculate final UHI raster
a.	Remove areas in larger streams, rivers and lakes so that the relative scale is for land
areas only.
b.	Selected Forest Park as the location for the reference temperature, due to its high
amount of land cover that is natural (given the location).
c.	Rescale each day's LST map by setting the mean temperature of Forest Park to zero, and
calculating the difference above and below this reference temperature in degrees F.
d.	Average across the seven LST maps to yield a single map of summer daily UHI index. It
displays the average difference from the Forest Park reference LST, i.e. the warming or
cooling response of a pixel's LST on a summer day relative to mean LST in Forest Park.
i.	Our daily maps had Forest Park reference temperatures ranging from 67.1 °F to
73.8 °F.
ii.	The mean of the reference temperatures is 70.6 °F.
Companion document to Using EnviroAtlas to Identify Locations for Urban Heat Island Abatement.

-------
Resources
Butler, K. (2014). "Deriving temperature from Landsat 8 thermal bands (TIRS)." Retrieved from the
ArcGIS Blog from Esri: https://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2014/01/Q6/deriving-temperature-from-
landsat-8-thermal-bands-tirs/
Congedo, L. (2014). "Estimation of Land Surface Temperature with Landsat Thermal Infrared Band: a
Tutorial Using the Semi-Automatic Classification Plugin for QGIS." Retrieved from the From GIS to
Remote Sensing Blog: http://fromgistors.blogspot.com/2Q14/01/estimation-of-land-surface-
temperature.html
Setturu, B., Rajan, K. S., & Ramachandra, T. V. (2013). Land surface temperature responses to land use
land cover dynamics. Geoinfor Geostat Overview, 1, 4.
USGS. (2015). Landsat 8 (L8) Data Users Handbook. Retrieved from
https://landsat.usgs.gov/l8handbook section5.php
Zhou, W., Qian, Y., Li, X., Li, W., & Han, L. (2014). Relationships between land cover and the surface
urban heat island: seasonal variability and effects of spatial and thematic resolution of land cover
data on predicting land surface temperatures. Landscape Ecology, 29(1), 153-167.
Companion document to Using EnviroAtlas to Identify Locations for Urban Heat Island Abatement.

-------