Assessment of Land Cover Changes in the Hinterland of Barranquilla (Colombia) Using Landsat Imagery and Logistic Regression

Henry Schubert,Brigitta Schütt,Oscar Rojas-Zamora,Andrés Caballero Calvo,Grischa Brokamp,Markus Rauchecker

doi:10.3390/land7040152

Henry Schubert, Brigitta Schütt + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/land7040152

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Abstract

Barranquilla is known as a dynamically growing city in the Colombian Caribbean. Urbanisation induces land use and land cover (LULC) changes in the city and its hinterland affecting the region’s climate and biodiversity. This paper aims to identify the trends of land use and land cover changes in the hinterland of Barranquilla corresponding to 13 municipalities in the north of the Department Atlántico. Landsat TM/ETM/OLI imagery from 1985 to 2017 was used to map and analyse the spatio-temporal development of land use and land cover changes. During the investigation period, the settlement areas grew by approximately 50% (from 103.3 to 153.6 km2), while areas with woody vegetation cover experienced dynamic changes and increased in size since 2001. Peri-urban and rural areas were characterized by highly dynamic changes, particularly regarding clearing and recovery of vegetated areas. Regression analyses were performed to identify the impact factors of detected vegetation cover changes. Computed logistic regression models included 20 independent variables, such as relief, climate, soil, proximity characteristics and socio-economic data. The results of this study may act as a basis to enable researchers and decision-makers to focus on the most important signals of systematic landscape transformations and on the conservation of ecosystems and the services they provide.

Highlights

Land cover changes are directly linked to loss of natural habitats and fragmentation of ecosystems and are a major threat for biodiversity and a continuous provision of ecosystem services [1,2,3].Ecosystems and their services are threatened by both internal and external drivers, as well as by global trends, including increases in human population, agricultural activities, infrastructure projects, and per capita consumption [4,5,6]
The results obtained through the analyses of vegetation cover changes permit an array of conclusions: firstly, we found thatnatural woody ecosystems are exposed to a high risk of complete transformation through the implementation of numerous infrastructure and urbanisation projects
Within the past three decades, vegetation cover changes in the hinterland of Barranquilla were highly dynamic as a result of clearing, rotating cultivation, and cattle breeding on the one hand, and from abandoning of formerly used land, extensification, and natural recovery of vegetated areas on the other hand

Summary

Introduction

Land cover changes are directly linked to loss of natural habitats and fragmentation of ecosystems and are a major threat for biodiversity and a continuous provision of ecosystem services [1,2,3]. Ecosystems and their services are threatened by both internal and external drivers, as well as by global trends, including increases in human population, agricultural activities, infrastructure projects, and per capita consumption [4,5,6]. Latin America has been characterized by large-scale losses of forest areas in recent decades [7,8]. Current trends of rural-urban migration [12], decreasing rural population density, and extensification could promote natural recovery [13,14].

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