Study of land use/cover change impacts on thermal microclimate using QGIS in urban agglomeration

Thermal comfort and air quality are major concerns for people living in urban areas. In the last decades, cities are growing quickly and the increased urbanization is leading to the expansion of cities, which changes the properties and composition of the landscape. However, the surface temperatures are increasing, globally, because of anthropogenic climate change. Land use and land cover change have been shown to have a significant effect on climate through various pathways that modulate land surface temperature and rainfall. The objective of this study is to understand how the land use and land cover change affects the thermal microclimate in the city of Biskra (Algeria) using QGIS for the period between 2010 and 2020. The analysis results reveal that the mean temperature of the city has increased by ~4 °C during the past decade with the most accelerated warming (~7 °C) occurring during the recent decade (2010 to 2020). Our study shows also that 32% to 56% of this observed overall warming is associated with land use/cover and the largest changes are related to changing vegetation cover as evidenced by changes to both land use and land covers classes and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI).