Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (Dec 2021)
The relationship between urban heat islands and geological hazards in Mokattam plateau, Cairo, Egypt
Abstract
The urban expansion has negative impacts on global environmental change, including atmospheric pollution, temperature increase and landscape change with geological hazards, called the urban heat island phenomenon. The Mokattam plateau has suffered from urban development, with a crowded population that increasing environmental pollution causing more geological hazards. The technology of extracting and calculating heat emissions by using satellite imagery of different dates were applied in this research. Thus, identifying the most dangerous places from a geological point of view through distributing temperatures and linking them to vegetal attributes, water leakage from public sewage and built-up areas, in addition to linking them to the geology of the region, according to the different properties of the land cover of the Earth’s surface. The calculated surface temperature of the Earth (LST) increases by increasing the built-up areas of a certain region from five to ten degrees related to land use/land cover, the temperatures increased over time with the development of urbanization for the same studied area causes landslides in the region, and the plant growth with increased water infiltration around cracks and places of weakness may lead to the dismantling of the infrastructure which causes landslides and geological hazards, including cracks, faults, landslides, and rockfalls.
