Land Cover And Landscape Composition Change Of The Caatinga: A Case Study From São Francisco Valley Area

Land use change impacts range from collective global climate effects to local degradation of ecosystem services available to humans. Consequently, understanding regional land use change has many ramifications. In northeastern Brazil, the caatinga, a semi-arid scrub vegetation rich in endemic species, has undergone extensive area loss and degradation due to increasing human populations, expansion of agriculture due to growth in irrigation, and recently infrastructure development for inter-basin transfer of water to support economic development. This research focuses on land use change of caatinga in Pernambuco State and North Central Bahia State along the São Francisco River. Landsat imagery from 1989 to 2008 is used to (1) detect the degree and direction of land use change, and (2) quantify changes in landscape structure, and (3) examine spatial variation in landscape structural changes. Change analysis highlights the loss of caatinga vegetation cover, especially along the São Francisco River where irrigation and urban cover expanded both along andfurther away from the river. Transformation of landscape composition and structure varies from extensive coalescence of agriculture along the river, to increased spatial complexity and caatinga fragmentation further from the river, to spatially localized fragmentation of caatinga vegetation even further from the river.