In the last decades, due to climate changes, soil deterioration and land use/land cover (LULC) changes, land degradation (LD) has become one of the most important issues at the global, regional and local scale. In concrete terms, LD determines a reduction in the productivity of a territory and in its capacity of providing ecosystem goods and services. “Syndromes” of LD can be assessed in the past, and scenarios, conversely, can be developed for the future, as information baselines for sustainable land management strategies and interventions.

The European Commission Directorate-General for the Environment (DG Environment) and the European Environmental Agency (EEA) have identified soil organic matter conservation and mitigation of soil loss by erosion as priorities for the collection of policy-relevant soil data at the European scale. In order to support European Union (EU) soil management policies, soil quality indicators are required that can be applied using harmonized data for the EU Member States.

The relationship between land cover patterns and surface temperature was examined using random forest as well as simple linear regression for two urban sites in Denver, Colorado, USA. Among four land cover types of buildings, trees, grass, and roads and parking lots, only trees and roads and parking lots show significant spatial metrics affecting surface temperature using both the methods.