ASSESSING URBAN SPRAWL AND ITS IMPACTS ON URBAN THERMAL ENVIRONMENT BY USING GEOSPATIAL TECHNOLOGY IN ADDIS ABABA AND SHAGGAR CITIES, ETHIOPIA

Uncontrolled urban land use land cover change (LULC) is a major driver of uban sprawl in developing countries. Unplanned urbanization negatively affects the urban microclimate due to the degradation of urban green spaces. This study aimed to analyze urban sprawl and its impacts on the urban thermal environment, particularly land surface temperature (LST) and the urban heat island (UHI) effect, in Addis Ababa and Shaggar cities from 1995 to 2025. Mulspectral and thermal bands of Landsat TM of 1995, ETM+ of 2010 and OLI/TIRS of 2025 were used. Supervised classification method with maximum likelihood algorithm and monowindow algorithm were used for LULC classification and LST calculation respectively, over the study period. In addition, UHI of the study area was generated from the LST from 1995 to 2025. The results show that urban areas expanded significantly by 518.3 km², while agricultural land and forest land decreased by 886.7 km² and 103.3 km², respectively, between 1995 and 2025. This trend indicates rapid urban expansion and conversion of agricultural land driven by population growth and increasing food demand. As a consequence of built-up area expansion, the mean LST increased by 7.9 °C, and the maximum UHI intensity increased by 9.9 °C over the study period. Linear correlation analysis revealed a strong negative relationship between LST and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) (R² = 0.953) and a strong positive relationship between LST and the Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) (R² = 0.935) in 2025. These findings suggest that future studies should focus on assessing the long-term impacts of climate change on urban thermal comfort in relation to socio-economic activities. Key Words: Correlation, LULC; LST; NDBI; UHI; NDVI