Spatio‐Temporal Modeling of Land‐Use/Land‐Cover Change and Land Surface Temperature Using SVM and CA–Markov in Dilla Town, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT Urban expansion in Dilla Town, Ethiopia, has progressively reshaped local thermal conditions by replacing vegetation and cropland with impervious built‐up surfaces. This study analyses how three decades of land‐use/land‐cover (LULC) change have modified land surface temperature (LST) and projects future thermal patterns. Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI imagery from 2001, 2011, and 2021 was classified into five LULC classes using a Support Vector Machine (overall accuracy 90.4–92.4%; κ = 0.88–0.90). LST was retrieved from thermal bands via a single‐channel algorithm and related to NDVI and the Normalized Difference Built‐up Index (NDBI). Between 2001 and 2021, the built‐up area increased by ∼5.34 × 10 6 m 2 , while mixed forest and cropland decreased by 3.14 × 10 6 m 2 and 2.92 × 10 6 m 2 , respectively. Over the same period, LST rose from 23.17°C to 33.80°C to 24.42°C to 40.18°C, and mean LST increased from 27.47°C to 30.61°C. In 2021, LST showed a strong positive correlation with NDBI (R 2 ≈ 0.64) and a negative correlation with NDVI (R 2 ≈ 0.36). A CA–Markov model, validated with a Kappa Index of Agreement of up to 0.95, predicts continued urban expansion and a marked shift toward hotter LST classes by 2031, emphasizing the need for greening, wetland conservation, and heat‐aware urban planning.