Urban Vegetation Dynamics and Thermal Regulation in Semi-Arid Cities: Geospatial Education of Green Infrastructure Potential in the Northern Cape

Urban heat stress and deteriorating air quality are environmental risks in semi-arid cities, positioning urban forests as vital nature-based solutions for climate adaptation. Despite growing recognition of urban greening imperatives, South Africa’s (SA) Northern Cape Province remains characterized by sparse vegetation Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) and built environment expansion. The study’s research problem focuses on how vegetation LULC dynamics influence urban forests’ potential in mitigating heat stress and atmospheric pollution in arid urban systems. The study adopts a multi-scale analytical approach, conducting the LULC and NDVI analysis through a multi-temporal Landsat satellite imagery analysis quantifying LULC change from 2004 to 2024. Grounded in the Integrated Spatial Justice-Ecosystem Services (ISJES) Framework, the analysis reveals significant decline in dense vegetation LULC from 9021.77 km2 (2.4%) to 1262.10 km2 (0.3%), while barren land expanded from 73,417.01 km2 (19.7%) to 222,866.82 km2 (59.8%) intensifying urban thermal exposure. Built-up areas expanded from 91.06 km2 to 357.072 km2, further constraining ecological buffers across the province’s urban nodes and undermining urban climate resilience. The Global Moran’s I statistic for the NDVI change surface (I = 0.7843, Z = 443.87, p < 0.0001) confirms spatial clustering of degradation hotspots of NDVI decline affecting 66.5% of the study area. Furthermore, Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) results confirm that vegetation loss is being driven by the combined and spatially differentiated effects of mining proximity, urban expansion, livestock pressure, declining rainfall, and rising temperatures. In terms of thermal regulation findings, the Getis-Ord Gi hot spot analysis identifies significant NDVI decline covering 23.5% of the study area at the 99% confidence level, expanding to 33.5% and 39.5% at the 95% and 90% confidence levels, respectively; hence, there is a need for urban forest corridors, climate-sensitive spatial planning frameworks, and targeted greening interventions in heat-vulnerable arid geographies. This study provides the first comprehensive, multi-decadal quantification of vegetation loss across SA’s largest province.