Berhan, Gessesse (PhD)Mohammed, Habtamu2019-01-172023-11-282019-01-172023-11-282018-11http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/15829The Hawassa Town was experienced a rapid urban expansion over the past two decades because of accelerated economic growth and increase in population which resulted in unplanned urbanization. Due to this, land use land cover change has been formed and will result environmental problems and challenges. To notice the above-mentioned problems, exploring the land use land cover dynamics which will finally resulted in the emergency of Urban Heat Island (UHI) will be assessed that will value` both the communities and local government in the cities. This research work was conducted on the relationship between land use transformation and its implication on land surface temperature change at the heart of rift valley, Hawassa Town, Ethiopia. Remote sensing, GIS techniques and statistical methods were mainly employed for data analysis. A series of Landsat data was used to assess and analyze urban landscape dynamics and land surface temperature. It does so by generating land use land cover maps derived from Landsat 5 TM for 1986, 1998 and 2010, and Landsat 8 OLI for 2017, using supervise classification techniques. Spatial pattern analysis of LST was performed using thermal band of landsat images. Cross tabulation methods, regression analysis and hotspot analysis was employed to study to urban landscape dynamics and land surface temperature. Based on the analysis done, it was obtained that the areal extant of urban (built-up) area has increased considerably by 121.68%.The increasing difference of Surface Heat Intensity (SHIn) between urban area and non-urban area was distinguished. For instance, non-urban area was cooler than the urban area except the agriculture sector. As per calculation performed, the difference of the mean of hotspot and mean of cold spot areas ranged from 8.8 °C to 14.37 °C. Therefore, increasing surface heat intensity was observed between 1986 and 2017. The surface temperature was found to be greater for agriculture and urban (built-up) land use land cover types. Finally, it has been concluded that, with rapid urbanization, surface thermal intensity increased but relationships with vegetation, water bodies and swampy area suggest that optional for mitigating urban warming in tropical climate may be available. The use of hotspot analysis and the investigations of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) will fill the research gaps for the rest of Ethiopian city for studies of urban thermal variations.en-USLand use land coverLand surface temperatureUrban Heat IntensityRegression analysisCross TabulationUrban Heat IslandThesis