## 1 Introduction
[PERSON] and [PERSON] [20] employed an approach in order to determine surface UHIs, where they were assessed in certain scientific studies as a comparison of averages, as well as ultimate heat levels, among settled and non-settled areas. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [21] have documented that a decline in lake features may increase UHI intensity. Others have evaluated heat during certain periods; for instance, on a seasonal, monthly, annual, or daily basis. In some circumstances, UHIs have been determined by measuring heat alterations over time [22]. Furthermore, [PERSON] et al. [23] determined UHIs by measuring the mean transformed heat over both built-up and rural surfaces. Regarding surface UHI assessment, the comparison between average urban and non-urban forms has offered strong results. The development of LSTs in pre- and post-urbanized locations has highlighted the impact of substantial urban growth on heat islands; however, several towns did not have historical information on surface temperature prior to urban growth, making surface UHI assessment difficult [23]. Recent research performed by [PERSON] et al. [13] discovered that spatial changes within LULC can lead to changes in LST patterns. Furthermore, several studies have recently documented the impact of urban development and land use/cover (LULC) changes on land surface temperature, landscape thermal conditions, and urban heat island (UHI) intensity [24, 25, 26]. For example, built-up areas correlate positively with LST, while vegetation cover correlates negatively with LST [27]. Furthermore, the density of vegetation and impervious cover--its position, randomness, and accumulation--were found to be highly correlated with LST [25]. A subsequent study, conducted in the Atlanta and Minneapolis metropolitan areas in the United States, documented the magnitude and temporal variations of UHIs [26], and they found that UHIs differ substantially between urban and non-urban areas. However, very few UHI studies within the literature focused on arid areas have been performed. Some investigators have examined the influence of LULC on UHI intensity over the Al-Ahsa Oasis of Saudi Arabia through utilizing both terrestrial data and satellite images [28]. One constraint of the applied method was assessing UHIs in urban areascompared to the surrounding towns, disregarding the bare soils and sands around the city, which are expected to have a substantial LST influence in arid and semi-arid areas. Other work, however, has directly evaluated LST images with no customization [29], which produced results that were lacking scientific rigor since the atmospheric circumstances were not identical during the image acquisition period. Throughout the literature review, issues and areas for further study were highlighted. For instance, information regarding the spatiotemporal difference of UHIs in the semi-arid environment of the Al-Ahsa area were lacking detail on the particular impact of LULC development on UHIs. Therefore, this study aimed to quantify and analyze the spatiotemporal variation in UHIs in the arid Al-Ahsa region, in addition to exploring the extent to which urban growth during the last 30 years could have affected heat island distribution. The specific objectives were (1) quantifying the spatial variety in the UHIs in a semi-arid climate-based region, (2) assessing the key determinant elements and the spatial and temporal forms of NDBI and surface temperature distribution, and (3) measuring the influence in LULC evolution on land surface temperature over a time period of 30 years. The outcomes will be a significant step forward in understanding how urban development and a decline in green vegetation cover, particularly in arid and semi-arid oases, may affect habitat stability and human activities through the increase of UHI intensity and changes in spatial distribution.