SUMMARY
The relationship between land surface temperature (LST) and land use in Nakhon Ratchasima was studied using data gathered from three satellite images from Landsat-5 (30th January 1992), Landsat-8 (9 May 2016) and THEOS (17th February 2016). There were four categories of land use: built-up area, green area, bare land and water sources. The split-window concept was used to estimate the LST. In 1992, Nakhon Ratchasima city in Thailand comprised 47.76% built-up area, 37.45% green area, 13.19% bare land and 1.60% water sources. By 2016, the built-up area had increased by 23.04%, the green area had decreased by 16.66%, bare land had decreased by 6.81%, but water sources had increased by 0.43%. Moreover, in 1992 the mean LST was 25.43 °C for built-up areas, 24.44 °C for green areas, 24.97 °C for bare land and 24.75 °C for water sources. However, by 2016 the LSTs had increased for each category: 28.74 °C for built-up areas (+3.31 °C), 27.20 °C for green areas (+2.76 °C), 28.11 °C for bare land (+3.14 °C) and 27.72 °C for water sources (+2.97 °C). The findings indicated that the LSTs increased with the pace of urbanization and changes in land use. Linear regression analysis revealed that built-up land had a positive correlation with LST, where a 1% increase in built-up area increased its LST by 0.146594 °C.