Abstract:
Several studies carried out by different scholars
have proved that the world climate got hotter during the
last years. Most of the temperature increases since mid-
20th century has been caused by increases in atmospheric
greenhouse gas concentrations produced by
industrialization. Other than that, urbanization caused to
increase the area temperature because its transform the
natural land surface with modern land use and land cover
such as buildings, roads and other impervious surface.
When considering about Sri Lanka, now a days Biyagama
area is identified as a rapidly developing area and due to
this reason most probably the temperature may be
changed. But in Biyagama area, there is no meteorological
observatory and data could be got from the Colombo
meteorological observatory which is located near the
Southeast boundary of the city. Due to failure of a proper
mechanism to identify the temperature variation in this
area, there may be makes some restrictions to analyse the
spatial pattern of temperature and the temperature levels
in the Biyagama area.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the use of Thermal
Infrared Remote Sensing data for assessing temperature
differences in Biyagama area and examine the factors
influencing the elevation of temperature in the Biyagama
area. Thermal remote sensing has been used to measure
the Land Surface Temperature and its capability in
monitoring temperature and effecting microclimate in
urban areas.
In this study, bands of Landsat-7 ETM+ and Landsat 8 OLl
& TIRS imagery obtained during 2001-2018 will be
analyzed for the spatial distribution of changes in
temperature in Biyagama area. The study showed the
increment of Land Surface Temperature (LST) near the
industrial area in comparison with suburban areas, also
building is one of the factor that reflect more heat and it is
responsible for raising the surface temperature. It is
noticed that, Oil Refinery could be considered the main
source of heat in Sapugaskanda area.
