Urban Heat Island Dynamics of the Fast-Growing Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Twin City: A Geospatial-Temporal Analysis

Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) are created when natural landscapes are replaced by densely packed concrete structures and other energy-retaining infrastructure. The primary goal of the research is to explore the dynamics of Land Use / Land Cover change (LU/LC), Land Surface Temperature (LST), and UHI in the fast-growing twin cities of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar in Odisha, India, between 1990 and 2020. Data from the Landsat 5 and 8 satellites are used in the study. To assess the heat island condition, Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalised Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), Land Surface Temperature (LST) are measured. For the evaluation of accuracy Kappa Co-efficient method has been applied which shows that the accuracy level of LU/LC classification is good for both cities with 70% in Bhubaneswar and 78% in Cuttack respectively. It is revealed from the study that the built-up area was amplified for both cities from 1990 to 2020. The agricultural land and vegetation cover is continuously decreasing during the three decades. Additionally, excessive land surface temperatures in the twin city are being recorded, leading to urban heat island conditions. Wetland preservation, planting, rooftop gardening, and other efforts might be considered corrective measures to safeguard the twin city's urban ecology.