Abstract
The Portuguese territory has undergone a relevant land use and land cover changes (LUCC) over the past decades. The land use and land cover (LUC) datasets revision and new datasets production allow us to understand LUCC over time. This study goes further into this analysis using the most recent LUC datasets, covering the whole Portuguese continental area, from 1990 to 2012 and presents innovative knowledge that helps understanding LUC dynamics within this period. It shows that the trends inducing spatial variation within different LUC classes changed over time, revealing different spatial and temporal dynamics of these LUCC in the Portuguese territory. The main LUCC are related to the reduction of forest and certain types of agricultural areas, and an increase in urban areas, but the main LUCC assume different dynamics when taken at the regional scale (NUTS II). Future tendencies within LUCC are also estimated using CA-Markov, and the results point out the tendency of increase and decrease of the LUC types previously mentioned. The areas of LUC datasets with different properties were compared and large area discrepancies were observed for some LUC classes. These assessments are relevant results for the evaluation and understanding of LUCC and namely for the Portuguese planning process in the near future.
Highlights
This study presents an innovative LUC changes (LUCC) framework for mainland Portugal and compares the results obtained by LUC datasets with different properties
The third objective is the comparison of the LUC obtained using Corine Land Cover (CLC) and COS, in order to evaluate the discrepancies between LUC datasets with different properties
In the results obtained using CA-Markov, it was observed that the LUCC were predicted to be highly variable until 2027 in Portugal, with some LUC classes expected to greatly increase, and others were expected to greatly diminish in absolute terms
Summary
The study of the evolution of land use and land cover (LUC) has been of general concern in many territories due to observed transitions that reflect spatiotemporal dynamics (Shi, Chen, & Pan, 2000; Nunes, Serra, Pons, & Saurí, 2008; Almeida, & Coelho, 2011; König et al, 2013). In these approaches, the factors at the origin of the largest land use and land cover changes (LUCC) are the most important for the observed negative impacts (e.g., water erosion due to forest losses, catastrophic phenomena such as floods that are related to increases in impermeable surfaces, and reductions in surface water quality) (Fearnside, 1995; Hansen, Stehman, & Potapov, 2010; Schoene & Bernier, 2012).
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