Análisis multitemporal del cambio de uso de suelo e identificación de la fragmentación del paisaje mediante técnicas de percepción remota en el peri-urbano de la ciudad Cuenca

Abstract

The city of Cuenca is the cantonal capital and capital of the Azuay province. The periurban zone, considered as a transition zone between the city and the rural area, is being affected by the process of expansion of the city towards the rural area due to the uncontrolled growth of the urbanizations, thus losing: vegetation, forests and own agricultural activities of the area. This reality gives way to complications in the coverage and use of land and alterations in the landscape. In this work, Landsat 7 ETM + and Landsat 8 OLI / TIRS satellite images were obtained and preprocessed, and then the supervised classification was performed using spectral analysis. All the results obtained were validated using the Kappa index and a field analysis. Subsequently, the analysis of landscape metrics and fragmentation indices was performed to identify the categories within the urban and peri-urban area that have been most affected. Finally, the spatio-temporal projection of the changes in coverage, land use and landscape fragmentation were carried out for the years 2030 and 2050. It was identified that the city of Cuenca is indeed spreading towards the peripheries due to the great urban expansion caused mainly by population growth, since by 2016 the category of “Human Settlements / Uncovered Land” came to represent 49.95% of all urban and peri-urban surface. Therefore, there was an increase in the total area of this category of 16.79%, which represents an annual growth rate of 1.12%. On the other hand, there was a considerable decrease in the other two categories with an annual rate of 0.98% for the category "Crops / Vegetation / Pastures" and 0.21% for the category "Forests". When projecting the change in land cover and use for the years 2030 and 2050, it was possible to identify that the category “Human Settlements / Open Land” will continue to increase its surface within the landscape and therefore there will be a decrease in the surface of other categories.