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Abstract

Rapid urbanization and rising heat risk are intensifying thermal stress and environmental degradation in tropical cities. This study applies the Local Climate Zone (LCZ) framework to examine how urban morphology influences land surface temperature (LST) and to support evidence-based urban planning and climate adaptation in Makassar, Indonesia. We hypothesized that compact built LCZs (1–3) exhibit significantly higher LST than vegetated LCZs (A–G). Landsat 8 OLI and MODIS LST datasets (2013–2023) were processed in Google Earth Engine to evaluate decade-long urban development and thermal dynamics. LCZs were classified using a Random Forest (RF) model trained with approximately 100 manually digitized polygons per LCZ class derived from high-resolution Google Earth imagery. Model validation using a 70:30 training–testing split achieved an overall accuracy of 88% (Kappa = 0.83). The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) were derived to characterize vegetation and built-up density. LCZs 1–3 dominated Makassar’s urban core and recorded mean LSTs of approximately 32.5–33.0 °C, whereas vegetated LCZs A–G exhibited lower temperatures of approximately 27–28 °C. These differences were statistically significant (Analysis of Variance [ANOVA], p < 0.01). However, LCZ-level linear regression between mean LST and NDVI (R² = 0.08) and NDBI (R² = 0.009) indicated weak explanatory power, suggesting that class-level averages mask within-class thermal and morphological variability. The observed LCZ transitions from 2013 to 2023 further revealed the replacement of natural LCZs by compact built forms, highlighting the contribution of land-cover change to thermal intensification. The findings provide an LCZ-based framework to support climate-sensitive zoning, priority cooling corridor identification, and municipal heat-risk mapping in rapidly urbanizing tropical cities.

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