Temporal Integration of Remote-Sensing Land Use Maps to Identify Crop Rotation Patterns in a Semiarid Region of Argentina

AOKI ANTONIO; ROBLEDO, JOSÉ; IZAURRALDE, CESAR; BALZARINI, MONICA GRACIELA

AGRONOMY JOURNAL

AMER SOC AGRONOMY

Año: 2021

0002-1962

Crop rotations are key agronomic tools to enhance farm productivity, preserve soil, and ensure provision of ecosystem services. Knowledge of the spatial and temporal distribution of crops over regions is essential to characterize rotations at field scale and estimate their impacts on several outcomes. Our objectives were to: a) determine the diversity of cropping systems practiced in a semiarid region of central Argentina during an 8-year period, and b) use the generated high-resolution crop rotation map (one pixel per ha) and estimates of soil erosion to evaluate the association between cropping sequences and soil erosion intensity. Temporal aggregation of seasonal land maps was used for quantifying spatially-explicit crop rotations during 2010 ? 2018 in a 6,000 km2 agricultural semiarid region in Argentina. Only seven sequences of summer crops, mainly those including soybean (Sy) and/or maize (Mz), accounted for >90% of the spatiotemporal variability. Sy monoculture was the dominant cropping system (28.5%), followed by a 3-yr Sy-Sy-Mz rotation (23.9%), and other Sy-dominated rotation patterns. In winter, the prevailing land use was stubble (96.6%). The generated high-resolution maps illustrate the low diversity of crops in the study area during the last years. Mapping the spatiotemporal distribution of land use during a period allowed for visualization and quantification of land transformations and the examination of linkages between observed crop rotations and soil erosion.