Analysis of High Temporal Resolution Land Use/Land Cover Trajectories

Jean-François Mas,Washington Franca-Rocha,Rodrigo Nogueira De Vasconcelos

doi:10.3390/land8020030

Abstract

In this study, methods, originally developed to assess life course trajectories, are explored in order to evaluate land change through the analysis of sequences of land use/cover. Annual land cover maps which describe land use/land cover change for the 1985–2017 period for a large region in Northeast Brazil were analyzed. The most frequent sequences, the entropy and the turbulence of the land trajectories, and the average time of permanence were computed. Clusters of similar sequences were determined using different dissimilarity measures. The effect of some covariates such as slope and distance from roads on land trajectories was also evaluated. The obtained results show the potential of these techniques to analyze land cover sequences since the availability of multidate land cover data with both, high temporal and thematic resolutions, is continuously increasing and poses significant challenges to data analysis.

Highlights

Land use/cover changes (LUCC) is the focus of a large number of studies due to its relationship with global and regional change processes such as biodiversity loss, climate change, erosion, flooding, etc
These trajectories seek to represent the dynamics of people’s experiences, through the different episodes that they experience throughout their lives, and can be analyzed qualitatively, quantitatively or both [25]. Quantitative analysis of these sequences, based on measures of dissimilarity between individual trajectories, aim at identifying typical pathways and associating them to different covariates. The objective of this current study is to evaluate the application of statistical techniques used in life course trajectory analysis to temporal sequences of land use/cover in order to identify potentialities and limitations of this approach
Analysis techniques developed for life course trajectories were applied to sequences of land use/cover obtained from the classification of remote sensing imagery

Summary

Introduction

Land use/cover changes (LUCC) is the focus of a large number of studies due to its relationship with global and regional change processes such as biodiversity loss, climate change, erosion, flooding, etc. A sound evaluation of the temporal dynamics of LUCC is needed to understand its effects on ecosystems. Remote sensing has proven to be the most cost-effective method to monitor LUCC over large territories. Landscape dynamics can be assessed and analyzed by using multidate satellite imagery and geographic information system (GIS) techniques. Multidate data consists of images acquired on the same geographical area at a few acquisition dates over a rather large period. Zaehringer et al [2] used Landsat imagery to assess LUCC for two intervals, 1995–2005 and

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