Assessing the influence of urban expansion on land surface temperature in the Gazipur industrial zone of Bangladesh

The changes in the Land Use Land Cover (LULC), particularly the industrialization and urbanization, significantly impact the Land Surface Temperature (LST). Therefore, this study investigates the impact of urban expansion on LST in an industrial zone of Gazipur, Bangladesh, and analyzes the relationship between LULC changes and land surface emissivity over the period of 1995 to 2024, utilizing the satellite imageries and Machine Learning (ML)-based remote sensing techniques in Google Earth Engine (GEE). The study’s results revealed significant urbanization, accompanied by a sharp increase in land surface temperature. The built-up area increased more than fourfold (4.4-fold), expanding from 60.46 km² (3.33%) in 1995 to 266.36 km² (14.66%) in 2024, while overall accuracy (OA) ranged from 0.92 to 0.98, and the kappa Coefficient ranged from 0.88 to 0.97. Changes in LULC patterns, particularly the expansion of urban areas, have estimated a mean LST rise of about 1.64 °C in summer and 2.85 °C in winter over the 30 years (1995–2024), with the highest values associated with industrialized zones, particularly in Gazipur Sadar, which has faced significant challenges in sustainable urbanization. Although the estimated LST was validated using available ground-based and MODIS-derived temperature data, uncertainty may remain due to emissivity estimation and sensor calibration. The findings from this study highlight the need for sustainable urban planning and land management practices to minimize the effects of increased LST in industrialized regions and similar areas elsewhere. In addition, this study showcases the potentiality of GEE-based semi-automatic LST monitoring techniques at a large scale.