# Machine learning in modelling the urban thermal field variance index and assessing the impacts of urban land expansion on seasonal thermal environment

*PRI Rank #18 · Topics and Trends in Most Cited Land Use and Ecosystem Services Papers, Class of 2026*

*Canonical URL: https://pri.pepkio.com/top-papers/land-use-and-ecosystem-services/2026/rank-18*

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Rank | #18 |
| 18m citations | 82 |
| Journal | Sustainable Cities and Society |
| Year | 2024 |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.scs.2024.105345 |
| Corresponding authors | Maomao Zhang, Shukui Tan |
| Institution | Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China |

**Ranking page:** [Topics and Trends in Most Cited Land Use and Ecosystem Services Papers, Class of 2026](https://pri.pepkio.com/top-papers/land-use-and-ecosystem-services/2026)

**Paper link:** [10.1016/j.scs.2024.105345](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2024.105345)

## Topics

Thermal environment · UTFVI · Land surface temperature · Land surface temperature (LST) · Urban heat island (UHI) · UHI · Land use and land cover (LULC) · Land use and land cover (LULC) · Artificial neural network cellular automata · Artificial neural network cellular automata · whale optimization algorithm · WOA-LSTM · long short-term memory · Pearl River Delta region · Urban expansion · Thermal environment · Land use simulation/prediction · Sustainable urban development · thermal environment management · Urban heat mitigation

## Cite this ranking

```
Pepkio Research Index (PRI). Topics and Trends in Most Cited Land Use and Ecosystem Services Papers, Class of 2026. https://pri.pepkio.com/top-papers/land-use-and-ecosystem-services/2026. Accessed 2026-10-29.

Zheng Su, Tinsley Li, Thematic Shifts in Early-High-Impact Cancer Genomics and Diagnostics Research: A Bibliometric and Semantic Analysis. bioRxiv 2026.07.04.736459; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.07.04.736459
```