Authors
Yuansheng Huang, Weixiao Zhang, Mengmeng Shi, Aisulu Bayalieva, Gulmira Karabalaeva
Published in
Frontiers in public health. Volume 14. Pages 1909236. Epub Aug 14, 2026.
Abstract
Rapid urbanization can intensify land-surface heat exposure by replacing natural surfaces with impervious materials, yet the thermal effects of specific land-cover transitions remain insufficiently understood. We integrated land-cover data for 2000, 2010, and 2020 with summer daytime land surface temperature (LST) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data for 2001, 2010, and 2020 to examine land-use change and LST-derived heat exposure across Zhejiang Province, China. Land-cover transition analysis, historical percentile-based heat-exposure identification, and regression models were applied. From 2000 to 2020, impervious surfaces expanded by 137.94%, with cropland accounting for 86.10% of newly added impervious surfaces. Mean summer daytime LST increased from 28.59 to 30.47 °C, while the 95th percentile increased from 31.45 to 36.09 °C. Newly added impervious surfaces exhibited the greatest warming (4.57 °C) and highest heat-exposure ratio (90.36%), whereas stable forestland showed the lowest warming (1.18 °C) and exposure ratio (9.24%). At the prefecture level, newly added impervious surfaces were positively associated with heat exposure (R 2 = 0.69), while NDVI was negatively associated with LST warming (R 2 = 0.81). Impervious-surface expansion and ecological buffering jointly shaped land-surface heat-exposure risk. Limiting heat-intensive land conversion and strengthening blue-green infrastructure in newly urbanized areas can support climate-adaptive spatial planning. These results represent an LST-derived public heat-risk proxy rather than directly observed health outcomes.
PMID:
42666260
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 29 Aug 2026.
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