MONITORING SPATIOTEMPORAL AND MICRO-LEVEL CLIMATIC VARIATIONS IN LAHORE AND SUBRUBS USING SATELLITE IMAGERY AND MULTI-SOURCE DATA

This research is aimed at monitoring of spatio-temporal and micro-level climatic variations for the lahore region from year 1950 to 2010. in order to accomplish the study objectives, multi-concept satellite imageries, meteorological data and anthropogenic parameters were analyzed in detail. a set of four imagery datasets, three from landsat etm+ and one from the aster, were digitally processed for major land cover features. results of digital imageclassification revealed prominent variations in various land cover features, specifically in terms of increased urbanization at the expense of oxygen-rich vegetal cover in the form of previously existing agriculture activity. the analysis of meteorological data for the said o period indicates an increase of 2.0 c in the average minimum temperature and decrease of o 0.6 c in the average maximum temperature of lahore. the study proposes that rapidly increasing urbanization is causing a drastic increase in the emission of co and smog. the 2 smog can be observed as dark-gray inversion layer underpinning greenhouse effect and causing increase in the minimum temperature and hence leads to the local climate change. such effects are contributing towards the local climate change along with the increased urbanization, traffic density, de-vegetation and construction/ earth-moving practices. resultantly, the use of remotely sensed imagery and multi-source data facilitates in estimating the spatiotemporal variations in the micro-level climate.