Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) in Mendoza and Tunuyán River basins. 1986-2018 (Mendoza-Argentina).

CECILIA RUBIO; FACUNDO MARTÍN; MARTÍN RIZZO; FACUNDO ROJAS

Nova Friburgo

Conferencia; Mountains 2018. II International Conference on Research for Sustainable Development; 2018

Universidad Federal Do Ceará; Universidade Federal Rural Do Rio de Janeiro; Mountain Partnership; Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Centro de Investigaciones de Montaña

Due to advancement in the area of Remote Sensing and GIS spatial analysis techniques, it has become possible to evaluate before and after scenarios of a landscape. In Mendoza (Argentina), although numerous studies have been carried out on LULCC (Land Use/Land Cover), these are based on very different theoretical and methodological as assumptions, making comparison and monitoring difficult. Also, these proposals generally require software and paid satellite imagery, making it difficult to replicate.  The present study aims at detecting and analyze the Land-Use/ Land-Cover change and drivers in Mendoza and Tunuyán river basins between 1986 and 2018 using multispectral satellite imagery; to develop an open source/public tool for land use change monitoring; to correlate LULCC dynamic and water (in)security issues and to enhance science-policy dialogues in Planning. We have a particular interest in the advance or retraction of the agricultural frontier in historical terms.This study highlights the value of free open-source GIS software and remote sensing as well. Recent advances in methods could be furthered by developing more standardized workflows to make GIS-based studies more replicable for different regions and scales of analysis. For example, LU/LC changes could be tracked with higher-resolution images from different satellites and even be analyzed online. It is of particular interest to be able to carry out the complete LU/LC analysis with open-source software so studies like this one do not depend on expensive commercial software. Unlike previous studies, this paper presents publicly-available results that may be useful for policy making in the governments of the province and departments, who could make direct use of the maps in their official land-use policy and zoning. Our future research agenda includes comparisons with images from other satellite (such as Sentinel) and software (such as Google Earth Engine) to refine the results and methods. We suggest continued research on the complex interaction of factors that drive LU/LC change. This will require multi-disciplinary approaches that integrate LU/LC changes with rural sociology and economy, critical physical geography and environmental history