Ermias, Teferi (PhD)Frew, Fentahun2020-11-242023-11-282020-11-242023-11-282020-08http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/23490Urban areas are the most dynamic regions in the world which always have a rapid change in both demographic and spatial dimensions. Urbanization is the main cause of global climate change and currently, it is a rising trend globally in general and in Ethiopia in particular. It has a significant influence on land use by substituting areas of natural resources and vegetation with impervious surfaces like built-up asphalt road and parking lots; which in turn increases the LST. The objective of the study was to assess urbanization/LULC and its impacts on LST in urban areas through taking in and around Gondar town. Supervised classification with maximum likelihood algorithm was used to assess the LULC changes and the split-window algorithm was used to extract LST from Landsat imageries which were acquired from 1988, 2002, and 2018 of the same seasons and MODIS LST was used to validate land surface temperature that was derived from Landsat thermal bands. Pearson correlation was used to analyze the relationship between LST and LULC indices (NDVI and NDBI). The results show that there is a significant change in LULC especially the built-up area of the study area which becomes more than triple over the study period from 2.85% - 12.82%. However, Vegetation areas are decreased from 18.78% to 11.4 % from 1988 to 2018. This implies that the areas covered by natural resources and vegetation are replaced with man-made features. Agricultural and bare land areas are also slightly decreased through the study period. This study shows that the LST of Gondar town ranges from 13.44 ℃ to 41.32 ℃ from 1988-2018. LST has a positive relationship with NDBI and a negative association between NDVI. Vegetated land and water bodies have low LST. However, most of the agricultural land, bare land, and central parts of Gondar town have high LST. There was a LULC change in Gondar town and it causes an increase in LST from 19882018. Therefore, the concerned body should have better environmental management strategies and thermal refreshing mechanisms.en-USGondar townLULCLand Surface TemperatureSWA,remote sensingThesis