Historical Delineation of Landscape Units Using Physical Geographic Characteristics and Land Use/Cover Change

Abstract

Landscape units are conceived as a part of the territory that share similar physical and geographic characteristics. Their delineation can contribute to identify the physical and social dynamics that emerge in the spatial environment and to propose strategies of planning and management of the territory. The main objective was to make a historical delineation of landscape units in the Duero river basin that demonstrate the dynamics of changes in the territory, the description of the actors involved, and the affectations in the natural and social environment. We analyzed the vegetation change and urban growth from 1983 to 2014, incorporating climatic, edaphic, and topographic variables. A Principal Component Analysis was performed with the information and results were used in Maximum Likelihood procedure to define different clusters based on environmental characteristics. We defined five categories from the Landsat images. Results showed landscape units with homogeneous environmental characteristics and some differences in the units' delineation were mainly influenced by political and socioeconomic factors. Temporally there was an increased tendency of landscape units, three in 1983, nine in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2011, and eight in 2014. This increase resulted from territory fragmentation because of berries and avocado cultivars expansion over wooded area.

Mapping the social values of ecosystem services to support better decision making

“…Landscape is an important concept in decision making (de Groot et al, 2010), as landscape units with similar physical and geographic characteristics (Campos-Campos et al, 2018) provide an inventory of environmental characteristics for planners. Also, Landscape classification has been used by researchers to compare results and create a consensus of knowledge to support planning process.…”

Identifying the Optimal Area Threshold of Mapping Units for Cultural Ecosystem Services in a River Basin

“…However, without a clear understanding of the mapping units, the protection and development of CES will be hampered [11]. To divide these units, Campos-Campos et al [12] analyzed variations in landscape units through the Supervised Classification method, while Alvioli et al [13] introduced an automated approach utilizing the r.slopeunits v1.0 software for delineation. Currently, the mapping units for CES in river basins mainly consist of existing grid cells [14], land-use units [15], homogeneous landscape units [16], and administrative units [17].…”