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Volume 8
Journal of Ecosystem & Ecography
Biodiversity Congress 2018
July 26-27, 2018
July 26-27, 2018 Melbourne, Australia
7
th
International Conference on
Biodiversity Conservation and Ecosystem Management
Rafael Moreno-Sanchez et al., J Ecosyst Ecogr 2018, Volume 8
DOI: 10.4172/2157-7625-C4-041
Exploration of land-cover changes using GlobeLand30 (2000-2010) at the national level in Mexico
Rafael Moreno-Sanchez
1
, Juan Manuel Torres Rojo
2
, Francisco Moreno Sanchez
3
, Daniel Carver
1
, Lily Niknami
1
and Elizabeth Clay
1
1
University of Colorado Denver, USA
2
Centro Investigación y Docencia Económicas, México
3
Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales y Agropecuarias, Mexico
T
his study explored the Land Cover (LC) and LC transitions at national level in Mexico using the GlobeLand30 (GL30)
land cover 30 meter resolution data sets for the years 2000 and 2010. This information was contrasted against the results
of previous national level Land Cover (LC)/LC Change (LCC) studies and land cover/use digital data sets. According to
GL30, wetlands and barelands have had the largest decreases in their areas during the 2000-2010 period (-13.33% and -9.26%,
respectively), while artificial surface and grasslands have had the largest increases (7.38% and 4.00%, respectively). Cultivated
(1.88%), forest (-0.47%), shrublands (-1.04%) and water bodies (-1.21%) show low changes during the 2000-2010 period. From
the GL30 estimates of LC extent and percent change, those for the forest and cultivated classes were the most similar to those
estimates reported in previous studies. The estimates for other LC classes show low agreement with previous studies and with
a set of aggregated LC classes created from official digital LC maps. Worth noticing is the small decreased found for the GL30
Forest land cover class during the 2000-2010 period. This suggests a change in processes that in previous decades were reducing
the extent of the forest cover in Mexico. The general reduction in LC transitions observed in the 2000-2010 GL30 data supports
reports that allocations for some land covers/uses in Mexico have reached maturity and are tending to stabilize. The results
of this study points to several needs for further research, such as carrying out assessments of the locational and classification
accuracy of the GL30 data sets for Mexico. More specifically, there is a need to closely analyze the extent and changes in the
GL30 artificial surface and wetlands LC classes.
Biography
Rafael Moreno-Sanchez has received his Bachelor’s degree in Forestry from the Chapingo Autonomous University in Mexico. He has received his PhD in Natural
Resources Management from Colorado State University in the USA. He has research, teaching and administrative experience including: Researcher for the
National Institute for Forest, Livestock and Agriculture Research (INIFAP) in Mexico, the Director of the National Center for Disciplinary Research in Conservation
and Improvement of Forest Ecosystems INIFAP (Mexico), Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Organization of American States-SEMARNAP in collaboration with the
University of Western Ontario, Canada. He has been teaching full time since 1996 in the areas of natural resources management, sustainable development and
geographic information science and technology. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the
University of Colorado Denver.
Rafael.Moreno@ucdenver.edu