Land Cover Change in Colombia: Surprising Forest Recovery Trends between 2001 and 2010

Land Cover Change in Colombia: Surprising Forest Recovery Trends between 2001 and 2010

background

This study mapped annual land-use and land-cover from 2001 to 2010 in Colombia using MODIS (250 m) products coupled with reference data from high spatial resolution imagery (QuickBird) in Google Earth.

Research Goals & Methods

The authors evaluated land cover change at four spatial scales: country, biome, ecoregion, and municipality.

Conclusions & Takeaways

Results show that from 1,117 municipalities, 820 had a net gain in woody vegetation (28,092 km2) while 264 had a net loss (11,129 km2), which resulted in a net gain of 16,963 km2 in woody vegetation at the national scale. The data also show that woody regrowth mainly occurred in areas previously classified as mixed woody/plantation rather than agriculture/herbaceous, and the majority of this gain occurred in the Moist Forest biome, within the montane forest ecoregions.

 

Reference: 

Sanchez-Cuervo AMaria, T. Aide M, Clark ML, Etter A. Land Cover Change in Colombia: Surprising Forest Recovery Trends between 2001 and 2010. Bond-Lamberty B, ed. PLoS ONE. 2012;7:e43943. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0043943.

Affiliation: 

  • Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico, United States of America
  • Department of Geography and Global Studies, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California, United States of America
  • Departamento de Ecología y Territorio, Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá D.C., Colombia