Abstract: As a typical city of rapid urbanization, the urban land surface temperature of Dongguan City was retrieved through interpretation of Landsat TM6, combined with land use map and meteorological observational data, and three thermal effect estimating indices (thermal effect contribution index, thermal pixels proportion index, regional thermal pixels proportion index) were designed to discuss the impact of various types of land use on urban thermal environment, which shows that urban and rural construction land for industry and residence take an important role, while water area and grassland gives little impact, and the thermal contribution of heath land to regional thermal environment is the least one. The result of the three indices also proved that it maybe untrue if we only consider the contribution of average temperature to urban thermal environment. The research also shows that the average temperature in winter had obviously been increased from 1988 to 1998 in Dongguan, and the land surface temperature was 2.21℃ in 1998 higher than that of 1988,while the water surface temperature had been changed little(0.76℃),in a word, the difference in surface temperature between water surface and land surface rise sharply as the average temperature rising from 1988 to 1998.