Wetherley gives talk at ERI climate meeting

Vegetation canopy temperature is an indicator of vegetation stress, evapotranspiration rate, and plant carbon uptake. Observing vegetation temperature variability across a city is therefore critical for quantifying urban water use, energy budgets, and microclimate variability. Remote sensing can observe spatial patterns in land surface temperature (LST) across large urban spatial domains; however, the spatial variability of LST in remotely sensed imagery of cities largely reflects urban surface heterogeneity rather than vegetation stress or function. In this study, we performed a large scale analysis of urban surface and LST variability across the megacity of Los Angeles, USA (4,466 km2), using remote sensing to characterize urban surface heterogeneity and measure LST. We quantified local LST effects of plant functional types as well as non-vegetated surfaces in order observe and model a functional vegetation LST signal at the city scale. Our results indicate potential for improved understanding of urban microclimates with imagery available from near-future satellite missions.