Landscape change in Southern Ecuador: An indicator-based and multi-temporal evaluation of land use and land cover in a mixed-use protected area

Abstract

In this study, we evaluate landscape composition and configuration changes between 1989 and 2016 associated with the establishment and downsizing of the Corazón de Oro Protective Forest, a mixed-use protected area in the tropical Andes of Southern Ecuador. We identify the most significant land use/land cover changes and the implications for management and conservation linked to these two events. We rely on remote sensing, landscape indicators, statistical analysis, and expert knowledge to evaluate landscape structure. This combination of methods allowed us to quantify diversity, evenness, proportional abundance, dominance, surface area, and isolation trajectories to assess compositional and configurational differences marked by the protected area’s creation and downsizing. While we found that landscape composition remained relatively unchanged over time, the creation of the protected area significantly altered landscape configuration but curbed human pressure on evergreen montane habitats. The downsizing event increased anthropogenic pressure on highland páramo vegetation. Our findings demonstrate that some aspects of landscape configuration vary independently of composition. Most importantly, however, we show that protected area formation and downsizing can significantly alter the spatial arrangement and size of transitional areas, which, in turn, may affect landscape dynamics with implications for energy flow and habitat function. The suite of landscape metrics used in this study are effective indicators that can assist managers monitor the performance of mixed-use protected areas.