land Article Linking Urban Sprawl and Surface Urban Heat Island in the Teresina–Timon Conurbation Area in Brazil Eduilson Carneiro 1 , Wilza Lopes 2 and Giovana Espindola 3, *   Citation: Carneiro, E.; Lopes, W.; Espindola, G. Linking Urban Sprawl and Surface Urban Heat Island in the Teresina–Timon Conurbation Area in Brazil. Land 2021, 10, 516. https:// doi.org/10.3390/land10050516 Academic Editors: Afshin Afshari and Julian Vogel Received: 18 April 2021 Accepted: 11 May 2021 Published: 13 May 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Piauí (IFPI), Teresina 64000-040, Brazil; eduilson@ifpi.edu.br 2 Department of Civil and Architecture, Federal University of Piauí (UFPI), Teresina 64049-550, Brazil; wilza@ufpi.edu.br 3 Department of Transports, Federal University of Piauí (UFPI), Teresina 64049-550, Brazil * Correspondence: giovanamira@ufpi.edu.br; Tel.: +55-86-98849-9212 Abstract: Negative consequences of urban growing disparities usually lead to impressive levels of segregation, marginalization, and injustices, particularly in the context of climate change. Un- derstanding the relations between urban expansion and social vulnerability has become extremely necessary for municipality management and sustainable urban development. Although the study of urbanization in Latin America (LA) has been well discussed, little attention has been given to how the population is affected by urban expansion-oriented movement after the 2008 economic crisis. Massive investments in infrastructure displaced the population to peripheral zones without adequate urban planning, which reflected in alteration in land use and land cover (LULC), followed by environmental impacts and public health issues caused by thermal discomfort, notably in semiarid regions. This paper aims to evaluate the effects of urban sprawl on the Teresina–Timon conurbation (TTC) area’s local population, located in Brazil’s northeast. Descriptive metrics (Moran’s I statistic and social vulnerability index) and orbital products derived from remote sensing—LULC and Land surface temperature (LST) maps—were applied. The results indicated that the housing program ‘My House My Life’ (PMCMV) had increased the values of land consumption per capita since 2009 significantly, showing a clear expanding trend. The gradual replacement of green areas by residential settlements resulted in an increased LST. The PMCMV program contributed substantially to a change in land use and land cover, which increased the extent of urbanized areas and changed the local microclimate. Keywords: urban landscape metrics; urban heat island; social vulnerability index; Moran’s I statistic 1. Introduction Rapid urbanization growth has become a challenge for global sustainability. Cities are continually expanding in population and size, and this spread usually culminates in environmental degradation and the permanent transformation of the local ecosystem [1–3]. Consequently, urban development has been pointed out as one of the drives of carbon losses from natural vegetation replacement, biodiversity disturbance, and soil rarefaction [4–6]. In this context, urban sprawl has been identified globally as one of the significant outcomes of urbanization processes associated with a vast range of social, environmental, and public health issues. Here we define urban sprawl in terms of scattered development and vast expanses of low-density urban infrastructure [7]. Then, even considering its relatively small coverage [1], the urban sprawl’s land consumption is described as having a profound impact on biodiversity conservation and carbon, water, nitrogen, and aerosol cycles at local and global scales. In Latin America (LA), 82.5% of the total population lives in cities, growing at a rate of 0.94% per year. Projections show that by 2050, LA’s urban population will continue to increase by around 34% [8,9]. After the 2050s, due to the projected decline of its population, abandonments of build-up areas are a possibility, even though the green recovery of Land 2021, 10, 516. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10050516 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land