Remote Sensing–Based Detection of Green Infrastructure Changes and Their Impacts on Urban Sustainability Indicators in Pakistan

Abstract

Rapid urbanization in Pakistan has resulted in significant land-use transformations, posing serious challenges to urban environmental sustainability. Green infrastructure plays a vital role in mitigating the adverse impacts of urban growth by regulating microclimate, enhancing ecological functions, and improving urban livability. This study employs a remote sensing–based approach to detect changes in green infrastructure and assess their impacts on selected urban sustainability indicators in major cities of Pakistan. Multi-temporal Landsat satellite imagery was analyzed using land use and land cover classification, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and Land Surface Temperature (LST) techniques to quantify vegetation dynamics and thermal patterns over time. Post-classification change detection was applied to identify gains and losses in green infrastructure, while spatial and statistical analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between vegetation cover and surface temperature. The results indicate a consistent decline and increasing fragmentation of urban green infrastructure, primarily driven by the expansion of built-up areas into vegetated and agricultural land, particularly in peri-urban zones. NDVI analysis reveals decreasing vegetation density, while LST results show a significant rise in surface temperatures across all studied cities. A strong inverse relationship between NDVI and LST confirms the cooling effect of green infrastructure. The study highlights the effectiveness of remote sensing for monitoring urban environmental change and underscores the urgent need for integrating green infrastructure planning into sustainable urban development strategies in Pakistan