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Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a common phenomenon in urban areas due to the dense infrastructure and lack of green spaces. Vegetation can play an important role in mitigating UHI. This study investigates the relationship between vegetation and land surface temperature (LST) in selected Indian cities from 1985 to 2017. Additionally, this research examines the influence of configuration or spatial distribution of vegetation across a city on vegetation-LST relationship. Landsat images were used to extract LST and vegetation percentage. Pearson correlation coefficient was used to determine the relationship between vegetation and LST. Furthermore, seven configurational metrics were used to analyse the influence of vegetation arrangement on the vegetation-LST relationship. The results showed that in most cities, the relationship between vegetation and LST shifted from a strong or medium negative significant relationship to no relationship and the ability of vegetation to mitigate LST is diminishing over time. The results also suggested that larger and more connected vegetation patches are more effective in mitigating LST. The multiple regression models used to investigate the influence of configurational metrics indicated that vegetation configuration is an important determinant of the influence of vegetation on LST. However, external factors such as pollution and weather conditions could affect the results. Despite the study limitations in terms of coarser spatial resolution and lack of considering climatic, environmental and health parameters of vegetation parameters, it provides an overview of the relationship between vegetation and LST and the spatial parameters that can influence it.
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