Sargodha is expanding quickly. But like many growing cities, it’s building fast, roads, housing, infrastructure, at the cost of green space. This imbalance creates urban heat islands, where temperatures soar, air quality drops, and people feel the effects. Without trees, parks or water bodies, the city becomes hotter, less healthy, and less resilient.

Urban sustainability starts with understanding the land. This map shows the Vegetation Cover Fraction in Sargodha, captured from space in 2018 and 2021. The lighter green areas represent patches of natural vegetation, while the light coloured mark areas that have lost green cover or remain bare.

This visual layer helps planners identify where greenery is disappearing and where targeted reforestation or park development can have the greatest impact.

In the project, this was combined with other Earth Observation datasets, including land surface temperature and population exposure, to build a comprehensive picture of heat risk and urban green inequality across the city.

This map shows Population Density in 2019, revealing how many people live in each part of Sargodha. By comparing this with vegetation and heat data (in earlier steps), planners identified neighbourhoods that are both highly populated and poorly greened.

Those areas are now the focus of a 10-year Green Transformation Action Plan, supported by the ADB and local government.