The Relation of Land Surface Temperature and Trees across Different Urban Land Use Classes based on Remote Sensing

Urban Heat Islands (UHI) represent a significant challenge in cities, increasing heat stress and impacting public health. Therefore, it is important to promote mitigation measurements, such as planting trees. This study analyzes the relationship between land surface temperature (LST) and tree canopy cover across different urban land use classes in the city of Munich, Germany. Therefore, we extracted mean LST and percentage of tree canopy cover from multi-sensor earth observation (EO)-data. We related these data to five land use categories: Residential, Industrial, Recreational, Traffic, and Mixed. We used violin plots and linear regression models to analyze the relationships. Our analyses revealed a consistent negative relationship between tree canopy cover and LST across all land use categories, with coefficients ranging from -0.038 °C/%-of tree cover in Recreational areas to -0.083 °C/%-of tree cover in Mixed areas. These findings highlight the importance of urban trees to reduce the LST, particularly in areas affected by high temperatures with limited vegetation.