A Study on the Relationship Between Normalised Deferential Vegetation Index and Land Surface Temperature in Coalfield Region, India: An Integrated Approach of Remote Sensing & GIS

Abstract

The present study deals with the spatiotemporal relationship between Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) with four different cloud-free Landsat data sets for the last 19 years (2003, 2006, 2015 & 2021) in Korba Coalfield Region, Chhattisgarh, India. The analysis shows that the temporal changes in NDVI are an indication of dense to low vegetation which revealed the higher NDVI value (0.4283) in the year 2021 and the lowest value of NDVI (0.1841) was assessed in the year 2003. Due to increases in residential, mining and industrial area, NDVI decreases. In the case of LST, a higher LST value (44.78℃) was observed in the year 2021, while a lower value (42.93 ℃) was assessed in the year 2003. The LST was integrated with NDVI which revealed negative statistics correlation with each other. Many influencing factors like increases in mining area & built-up area, changes in global climates, and cropping patterns may contribute to an increase in LST value. A strong negative correlation has been maintained between NDVI—LST for the entire period in this study as R2 = 0.965 in 2003, R2 = 0.125 in 2009, R2 = 0.878 in 2015, and R2 = 0.854 in 2021 respectively. LST was retrieved through thermal data analysis, which represents the spatial and temporal distribution of surface temperature. Consequently, the average LST of the overall area for the four-time interval has increased from 37.54to 39.89 ℃ (2.35 ℃) from 2003 to 2021. The results from this study may be useful for future residential planning as most of the land is converted into barren land or built-up area which are responsible for the increase in LST values. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2025.