Multitemporal analysis of vegetation cover change in the management area "Los Números" Guisa, Granma

Abstract

The work was carried out in the area of "Los Números", Guisa municipality, Granma province, Cuba. This area forms one of the largest rural councils in the territory, where forestry plays a fundamental role, with an impact on more than 80% of the area. The objective of the research was to evaluate the spatial-temporal dynamics of the change in vegetation cover that occurred between 1986 and 2016 in lands under a forest management regime. To this end, through the supervised classification of Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 satellite images, the cover was catalogued into four occupation categories (forest; shrub; grassland or crop; and naked-soil). Information from the forest management project of the Granma Agroforestry Enterprise was used, where the characteristics of the plots are presented. The result was that, during the period analyzed, 20.91 km² of shrub areas and 6.38 km² of grasslands, pastures or crops decreased, as well as 6.65 km² of naked soil, while 33.94 km² of forest clearly represented the advance of the forest cover limit. In terms of the persistence of the forest category, the Mountain Rainforest and Pine Forest formations were the most distinctive and, in relation to the persistence of the shrub category, the semi-deciduous formation on limestone soil and mountain rainforest were the most represented. The 54 % of the total recovery was shown in the Pinar del Rio. The reforestation plans undertaken during the period analysed have a major influence on the recovery of the coverage of this formation.