VEGETATION AND TEMPERATURE RELATIONSHIPS ACROSS URBAN AND PERI-URBAN LANDSCAPES: A TWO-PERIOD COMPARISON OF ORAN AND NOVI SAD (2015 AND 2024)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2298/IJGI260227013DKeywords:
land surface temperature, NDVI, urban heat island, vegetation cooling, Google Earth EngineAbstract
This study examines two-period change, between 2015 and 2024, in the statistical relationship between land surface temperature (LST) and vegetation density, expressed as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), across the urban and peri-urban study areas of Oran, Algeria and Novi Sad, Serbia. Landsat Collection 2 Level 2 imagery was processed in Google Earth Engine using pixel-level quality masking, thermal uncertainty filtering, water-body exclusion, and aggregation to a fixed 100 m grid. Pearson correlation analysis of 3,000 random land pixels per city and year shows contrasting LST–NDVI associations. In Novi Sad, the correlation weakened from r = −0.78 in 2015 to r = −0.69 in 2024, but remained strongly negative, indicating that higher NDVI values were still statistically associated with lower LST. In Oran, the already weak relationship declined from r = −0.23 to r = −0.08, meaning that NDVI explained less than 1% of LST variance in 2024. The two-period pixel-wise comparison showed warming and vegetation decline in both study areas, with stronger thermal amplification in Oran. ERA5-Land meteorological data and Dynamic World built-up data are used as contextual variables for each city, without treating precipitation differences between the two climatic settings as direct causal evidence. The findings highlight the need for locally adapted urban heat mitigation strategies.
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