Rapid urbanization is one of the most concerning issues in the 21st century because of its significant impacts on various fields, including agriculture, forestry, ecology, and climate. The urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon, highly related to the rapid urbanization, has attracted considerable attention from both academic scholars and governmental policymakers because of its direct influence on citizens’ daily life. Land surface temperature (LST) is a widely used indicator to assess the intensity of UHI significantly affected by the local land use/cover (LULC). In this study, we used the Landsat time-series data to derive the LULC composition and LST distribution maps of Nanjing in 2000, 2014, and 2018. A correlation analysis was carried out to check the relationship between LST and the density of each class of LULC. We found out that cropland and forest in Nanjing are helping to cool the city with different degrees of cooling effects depending on the location and LULC composition. Then, a Cellar Automata (CA)-Markov model was applied to predict the LULC conditions of Nanjing in 2030 and 2050. Based on the simulated LULC maps and the relationship between LST and LULC, we delineated high- and moderate-LST related risk areas in the city of Nanjing. Our findings are valuable for the local government to reorganize the future development zones in a way to control the urban climate environment and to keep a healthy social life within the city.

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