Study on the land surface cover dynamics of built-up areas and its implication for sustainable urban planning in Hawassa city, Ethiopia

Rapid and uncontrolled urbanization is one of the drivers responsible for land cover Change dynamics in Ethiopia. In most of the cities and towns of Ethiopia, the proportion of different types of urban land surface cover and trends of change in each are unknown and thus hindering environmentally sustainable urban planning. This study describes different land surface cover types and their dynamics of change, and subsequent influence on the Land Surface Temperature of Hawassa city between 2011 and 2021. The i-Tree canopy and Landsat 5 (TM) and Landsat 8 (OLI) images were used for 2011 and 2021 to analyze the land surface cover and surface temperature change, respectively. The results show that bare soil is the dominant land surface cover type (23.4%), followed by tree canopy cover (21.4%), while impervious roads occupied the smallest land surface area cover (3.4%) along with water bodies (1%). In 10 years most of the land surface cover types increased positively, including tree covers by + 9.8%. The only exceptions were bare soil and herbaceous cover, which decreased drastically by − 34.6% and − 2.8%, respectively. As a result of tree cover increment, the average and maximum Land Surface Temperature showed a declining trend between the two periods. This study shows that increasing tree cover in line with the expansion of urbanization is inversely correlated with the land surface temperature which implies that integrating green coverage along with the built-up area can reduce heatwave in the fast growing urban areas. Therefore, the Hawassa city administration should set tree cover targets to achieve the desired balance between green and grey infrastructure and enhance the climate resilience level of the study area.