Assessing Land Use-Cover Changes and Modelling Change Scenarios in Two Mountain Spanish National Parks

Abstract

Land Use-Cover Changes (LUCCs) are one of the main problems for the preservation of biodiversity. Protected Areas (PAs) do not escape this threat. Some processes, such as intensive recreational use, forest fires or the expansion of artificial areas taking place inside and around them in response to their appeal, question their environmental sustainability and their efficiency. In this paper, we analyze the LUCCs that took place between 1990 and 2006 in two National Parks (NPs) belonging to the Spanish network and in their surroundings: Ordesa and Monte Perdido (Ordesa NP) and Sierra de Guadarrama (Guadarrama NP). We also simulate land use changes between 2006 and 2030 by means of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), taking into account two scenarios: trend and green. Finally, we perform a multi-temporal analysis of natural habitat fragmentation in each NP. The results show that the NPs analyzed are well-preserved and have seen hardly any significant LUCCs inside them. However, Socioeconomic Influence Zones (SIZs) and buffers are subject to different dynamics. In the SIZ and buffer of the Ordesa NP, there has been an expansion of built-up areas (annual rate of change = +1.19) around small urban hubs and ski resorts. There has also been a gradual recovery of natural areas, which had been interrupted by forest fires. The invasion of sub-alpine grasslands by shrubs is clear (+2735 ha). The SIZ and buffer of the Guadarrama NP are subject to urban sprawl in forest areas and to the construction of road infrastructures (+5549 ha and an annual rate of change = +1.20). Industrial area has multiplied by 3.3 in 20 years. The consequences are an increase in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), greater risk of forest fires and greater fragmentation of natural habitats (+0.04 in SIZ). In the change scenarios, if conditions change as expected, the specific threats facing each NP can be expected to increase. There are substantial differences between the scenarios depending on whether or not incentives are accepted and legal restrictions are respected.

A Centennial Path Towards Sustainability in Spanish National Parks: Biodiversity Conservation and Socioeconomic Development (1918-2018)

“…The DISESGLOB project also produced land use-land cover (LULC) scenarios for both NPs and their surroundings between 2006 and 2030, taking into account recent developmental trends [18]. The results show that no major LULC changes are expected inside both NPs.…”

Complex Socio-Ecological Systems: Translating Narratives into Future Land Use and Land Cover Scenarios in the Kilombero Catchment, Tanzania

“…The simulation of the LULC scenarios was performed using the Land Change Modeler (LCM) [66][67][68] integrated into the IDRISI GIS-Software TerrSet (version 18.31) [67]. The LCM is widely applied in LULC scenario modeling such as deforestation [69], urban growth [70], conservation [71,72], and water resources modeling [5].…”

“…Given the available data, those years represent the current changes in the Kilombero catchment most appropriately [5]. Second, two transition submodels representing the identified major LULC transformations were calibrated deploying the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural network [68,70,71]. The submodel 'cropland' included all LULC class transitions from natural vegetation to cropland while the submodel 'rice' included all transitions from natural vegetation to rice.…”

Preface: Special Issue on Sustainable Territorial Management

“…Some processes such as intensive recreational use, forest fires or the expansion of artificial areas inside and around them jeopardise their environmental sustainability and effectiveness. Martínez-Vega et al, 2017 [30] analyse the LULC changes that took place between 1990 and 2006 in two Spanish national parks (NPs). They also simulate LULC changes between 2006 and 2030 through Artificial Neural Networks, taking into account a business-as-usual scenario and a green scenario.…”