Impact of urban decadal advance on land use and land cover and surface temperature in the city of Maceió, Brazil

•The crisis in the sugar and alcohol sector contributed to the expansion on the north zone of Maceió.•Aceleração do Crescimento and Minha Casa Minha Vida programs boosted for urban expansion in Maceió.•The urban expansion of the northern zone contributed for increase on LST.•In the NDVI, the vegetation class reduced 49.81% on last 14 years.•In the NDBI, the built-up class increased 107.96% over the past 30 years. The development / urbanization process of Brazilian cities in the last decade occurred since the creation of the Programa de Aceleração de Crescimento (PAC) and Programa Minha Casa Minha Vida (PMCMV). In this study, we evaluated the impact of these programs on urban sprawl in the northern part of the Alagoan capital, Maceió, located in the Northeast of Brazil, by using orbital products from remote sensing (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index-NDVI, Normalized Difference Built-up Index-NDBI e Land Surface Temperature-LST) during the period from 1987 to 2017. Descriptive statistics (minimum, maximum, mean and standard deviation) and Pearson correlation analysis were applied to the NDVI, NDBI and LST in the selected years (1987, 1998, 2003 and 2017). The results obtained indicated significant changes in land use and land cover in the last thirty years verified by the NDVI with a gradual decrease in vegetation cover in areas north, east and northeast of the northern zone of Maceió over time, which it was also found by the NDBI. This gradual replacement of green areas by residential and commercial developments resulted in a significant increased LST, from 26.40 ± 1.63 °C in 1987 to 32.73 ± 3.20 °C in 2017, and in the latter, some regions indicated values higher than 35 °C and the difference between 2017-1987 oscillated between 4–10 °C. The PAC and PMCMV programs contributed significantly to a change in land use and land cover, which increased the extent of urbanized areas as well as changes in the local microclimate.