Land cover is an important descriptor of the earth’s terrestrial surface. It is also crucial to determine the biophysical processes in global environmental change. Land-use change showcases the management of the land while revealing what motivated the alteration of the land cover. The type of land use can represent local economic and social benefits, framed towards regional sustainable development. The Amazon stands out for being the largest tropical forest globally, with the most extraordinary biodiversity, and plays an essential role in climate regulation. The present work proposes to carry out a bibliometric analysis of 1590 articles indexed in the Scopus database. It uses both Microsoft Excel and VOSviewer software for the evaluation of author keywords, authors, and countries. The method encompasses (i) search criteria, (ii) search and document compilation, (iii) software selection and data extraction, and (iv) data analysis. The results classify the main research fields into nine main topics with increasing relevance: ‘Amazon’, ‘deforestation’, ‘remote sensing’, ‘land use and land cover change’, and ‘land use’. In conclusion, the cocitation authors’ network reveals the development of such areas and the interest they present due to their worldwide importance.

The Ecuadorian Amazon is considered a biodiverse region, and at the same time contains the largest number of oil blocks and oilfields in the country. Oil exploitation requires the implementation of oil facilities and related infrastructure, such as roads, water, and energy supply, for operation. These large engineering works can alter the dynamics of the Amazonian natural ecosystems. This paper analyzes the land use and land cover (LULC) change and relates spatial patterns within an oil block located in the province of Orellana, Ecuador. The study was processed in two phases, the first corresponding to the collection and classification of LULC classes within the oil block. The second phase concerned the calculation of landscape metrics, with the purpose of quantitatively characterizing each class. This analysis was carried out for the pre-concession, post-concession scenarios of the oil block and the current scenario of the region. The results revealed that the low predominance of forest cover within the study region is not directly associated with the beginning of the Block 47 concession. On the other hand, a significant reduction of the Coca River was evidenced for the 2018 scenario.

Landslide occurrence has become increasingly influenced by human activities. Accordingly, changing land use and land cover (LULC) is an important conditioning factor in landslide susceptibility models. We present a bibliometric analysis and review of how LULC was explored in the context of landslide susceptibility in 536 scientific articles from 2001 to 2020. The pattern of publications and citations reveals that most articles hardly focus on the relationship between LULC and landslides despite a growing interest in this topic. Most research outputs came from Asian countries (some of which are frequently affected by landslides), and mostly with prominent international collaboration. We recognised three major research themes regarding the characteristics of LULC data, different simulated scenarios of LULC changes, and the role of future scenarios for both LULC and landslide susceptibility. The most frequently studied LULC classes included roads, soils (in the broadest sense), and forests, often to approximate the negative impacts of expanding infrastructure, deforestation, or major land use changes involving agricultural practice. We highlight several articles concerned primarily with current practice and future scenarios of changing land use in the context of landslides. The relevance of LULC in landslide susceptibility analysis is growing slowly, though with much potential to be explored for future LULC scenario analysis and to close gaps in many study areas.