Land-Use and Land Cover Dynamics in South American Temperate Grasslands.

BALDI G.; PARUELO, J.M.

Ecology and Society

Año: 2008 vol. 13 p. 1 - 20

1708-3087

ABSTRACT. In the Río de la Plata grasslands (RPG) biogeographical region of South America, agriculturalactivities have undergone important changes during the last 15–18 years because of technologicalimprovements and new national and international market conditions. We characterized changes in thelandscape structure between 1985–1989 and 2002–2004 for eight pilot areas distributed across the mainregional environmental gradients. These areas incorporated approximately 35% of the 7.5 × 105 km&#178of the system. Our approach involved the generation of land-use and land cover maps, the analysis oflandscape metrics, and the computation of annual transition probabilities between land cover types. All ofthe information was summarized in 3383 cells of 8 × 8 km. The area covered by grassland decreased from67.4 to 61.4% between the study periods. This decrease was associated with an increase in the area ofannual crops, mainly soybean, sunflower, wheat, and maize. In some subunits of the RPG, i.e., Flat InlandPampa, the grassland-to-cropland transition probability was high (pG®C = 3.7 × 10-2), whereas in others,i.e., Flooding Pampa, this transition probability was low (pG®C = 6.7 × 10-3). Our description of themagnitude, direction, and spatial distribution of land-use and land cover changes provides a basis fromwhich to develop spatially explicit scenarios of land cover change.