Landscape and Urban Planning 103 (2011) 362–371 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Landscape and Urban Planning j ourna l ho me p ag e: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan Development of an urban landcover classification scheme suitable for representing climatic conditions in a densely built-up Asian megacity Jeong-Hee Eum a , Dieter Scherer b , Ute Fehrenbach b , Jung-Hun Woo c,∗ a Korea Environment Institute, 290 Jinheungno, Eumpyeong-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea b Department of Ecology, Technische Universität Berlin, Rothenburgstrasse 12, 12165 Berlin, Germany c Department of Advanced Technology Fusion, Konkuk University, 1 Hwayang-dong, Gwangjin-Gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 21 December 2010 Received in revised form 15 August 2011 Accepted 24 August 2011 Available online 17 September 2011 Keywords: Urban landcover classification scheme Urban climate Asian megacity Landuse planning Land surface parameter a b s t r a c t The objective of this paper is to acquire a better insight into a landcover classification scheme which is suitable for representing the climatic properties of Asian megacities. Seoul, Republic of Korea, was used as a testbed. First, landcover classification was performed using Landsat 7 ETM+ using eight land- cover types suitable for representing the climatic conditions of Seoul. As a next step, 10 land surface and thermal parameters were estimated for individual landcover classes. Finally, the suitability of the climatologically classified urban landcover scheme was analyzed in two ways. Firstly, the spatial distri- bution of land surface temperature (LST) was retrieved using the thermal band of Landsat 7 ETM+ and the retrieved LST values over eight landcover classes were statistically analyzed. Secondly, 24-h temperature changes based on both eight landcover classes and four classes were simulated using the meso-scale model MetPhoMod. These were compared with measurement data from 24 automatic weather stations in Seoul. This study showed that the eight landcover classification scheme is suitable for representing the climatic properties of Seoul, which is one of the Asian megacities. Moreover, the eight classes represent the thermal conditions better than the four conventional classes during nighttime, which implies that this eight landcover classification scheme can be useful to analyze the nocturnal urban heat island effect. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction It is well known that urbanization has many significant effects on all elements of the environment. During the last few decades these effects have been extensively discussed by a large number of studies. These effects include habitat destruction (Markovchick- Nicholls et al., 2008), air pollution (Barbera, Currò, & Valenti, 2010; Fenger, 1999), flood risk (Sheng & Wilson, 2009; Wheater & Evans, 2009) and the formation of specific climatic conditions that dif- fer from neighboring rural areas (Karaca, Tayanc ¸ , & Toros, 1995). These specific climate conditions, referred to as the urban climate, discussion of urban heat islands, low relative humidity and weak wind speed is common and it is well known that such phenomena are mainly attributable to construction activities in urban areas. As a result of these activities, the vegetated land covers are trans- formed into artificial surfaces such as buildings and roads that alter the form of the landscape and also change the atmospheric con- ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 2 2049 6022; fax: +82 2 452 3410. E-mail addresses: jheum@kei.re.kr (J.-H. Eum), Dieter.Scherer@tu-berlin.de (D. Scherer), Ute.Fehrenbach@tu-berlin.de (U. Fehrenbach), jwoo@konkuk.ac.kr (J.-H. Woo). ditions. For this reason, the urban planning and policymaking that characterize urban development and landuse types are increasingly becoming important tasks to manage urban climatic conditions. In order to manage and improve the urban climate by urban planning and policymaking, adequate information on the urban climatic conditions is essential. For instance, the effects of urban growth on the thermal environment and landuse effects on urban heat islands should be analyzed to develop an urban heat island mitigation policy (Chen, Zhao, Li, & Yin, 2006; Kim & Baik, 2005). Urban ventilation conditions induced by the topography and lan- duse type provide important information for preparing strategies to mitigate urban heat islands and air pollution, these have often been used in German-speaking countries (Fehrenbach, Scherer, & Parlow, 2001; Lazar & Podesser, 1999; Scherer, Fehrenbach, Beha, & Parlow, 1999) and recently in some Asian cities (Katzschner & Mülder, 2008; Ng, 2009; Ng, Katzschner, Wang, Ren, & Chen, 2008). For analyzing urban climatic conditions such as urban heat islands and urban ventilation conditions, the definition of land sur- face characteristics is essential. Because the ground is the bottom boundary of the atmosphere, parameters describing the land sur- face properties are used for simulating the physical and dynamic processes on the land surface. To analyze the ventilation charac- teristics, urban roughness information from building structures 0169-2046/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2011.08.010