The Response of Land Surface Temperature to Actual Land Cover Changes at the Global Scale from 2001 to 2016

Land cover changes (LCCs) affect surface temperatures at local scale through biophysical processes. However, previous studies on the temperature effects of LCCs, whether the potential impacts of virtual LCCs using the space-for-time assumption or the actual impacts of observed LCCs using the space-and-time scheme, have primarily concentrated on analyzing their spatial distribution patterns. Consequently, the temporal trends of temperature effects due to LCCs are less discussed. This study analyzed the temporal trends of land surface temperature (LST) effects induced by actual LCCs by using long-term European Space Agency land cover data and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer LST data. The results show that, from 2001 to 2016, there was a gradual reduction in the count of pixels experiencing LCCs globally in which cultivated land expansion is an important cause of LCC. The LST's response to actual LCCs presented a trend of initial increase followed by a subsequent decrease.