Detecting Urban Land Use Change and its Impact on the Surface Temperature of Greater Hyderabad City using Landsat Images 1 K.Sundara Kumar*, 2 K.Padma Kumari & 3 P.Udaya Bhaskar 1 Research Scholar, Dept. of Civil Engineering, JNT University-Kakinada, A.P, India 2 Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, JNT University-Kakinada, A.P, India 3 Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, JNT University-Kakinada, A.P, India *corresponding author e-mail: skkusuma123@gmail.com , Ph: +91 9440112013 Abstract The City of Hyderabad in Andhrapradesh of India has been experiencing a rapid urban growth in the past two decades which has caused rapid changes in the environmental quality of the urban area. Urban Heat Island (UHI) due to high land surface temperatures is one of the major upcoming problems in developing cities. Conversion of land surface in to more impervious surfaces and reduction of vegetative cover are the major reasons for the development of UHI. Studies on urban expansion Land use/cover are helpful to estimate the trend of UHI. In this research Land use/cover maps of the city were developed from Landsat TM and ETM+ images for 1989 and 2011, spanning a period of 22 years. Land surface temperature maps were developed from thermal band of Landsat imagery. It was found that during this period, built up area in the Greater Hyderabad city is increased by 86.35%, Agriculture area and vegetation has been decreased by 24.25% and 68.65% respectively. The minimum and maximum land surface temperatures are increased by 0.9 and 1.6 0 K respectively. It is observed that increase in urban area has increased the Land surface temperature of the area. Keywords: Land use/ cover, Change Detection, Landsat TM/ETM+, NDVI, Urban Heat Island, Remote sensing 1. INTRODUCTION Urban growth and sprawl have severely altered the biophysical environment. Rapid urbanization has significant influence on different aspects of the quality of life and research in determining the patterns of urbanization and quantifying their impacts is the need of the hour. Unplanned urbanization and urban sprawl will directly affect the land use and land cover of the area. The changes in land use/cover include loss of agricultural lands, loss of