The urban thermal environment can be an important index to detect heat island phenomena and manage it to improve urban life quality. Cheongju is a typical plain-city that main part has been formed and developed in lowland. The Mushim stream crosses the city from south to north. We reviewed the use of thermal remote sensing in stream around areas and the thermal environments, focusing primarily on the Urban Heat Island(UHI) effect. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between the stream nearby urban area and the stream cooling effect of UHI. The objectives are to determine the usefulness of KOMPSAT-2 bands MS3 and MS4 for vegetation cover mapping, and the usefulness of LANDSAT TM band 6 in identifying thermal environmental characteristics and UHI. Land Surface Temperatures (LST) are retrieved by single-channel algorithm to study the UHI from the 6th band (thermal infrared band) of LANDSAT TM images and thermal radiance thermometer based on remote sensing method and the LST distribution maps are accomplished according to the retrieval results. There is also comparison of satellite-derived and in situ measured temperature. The results indicated that the LST of urban center is higher than that of suburban area, the temperature of mountain and water are the lowest area, so it is clearly proved that there are obvious UHI effects by stream. The surface temperature distribution of Mushim stream is detected $2^{circ}C$ lower than urban area.