In this paper

the high-spatial-resolution thermal infrared domain data from the Tiangong-1 satellite were used to retrieve the Land Surface Temperature (LST) based on the radiative transfer model and Plank's law. The Heihe River Basin was selected as the study area. The retrieving process was supported by the numerous ground-based measurements from the Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (HiWATER) project implemented in the midstream of this basin. The retrieval results were available and reasonable to describe the distribution of LST in detail

which was most significant for assessing the heterogeneity of LST. To validate the retrieval results

the eight sub experimental regions with different landscapes were selected to carry out the LST ground-based observations synchronized with the Tiangong-1 satellite. The validations results showed that the retrieval LSTs fit well with ground-based LSTs

and were with a bias of -0.375℃. Additionally

the results demonstrated that the retrieval processes proposed in this paper were applicable for the Tiangong-1 satellite to retrieve the accurate LSTs.