Multi-temporal analysis of change in land use and deforestation in the Los Ilinizas Ecological Reserve, Andean Ecuador

Abstract

The Los Ilinizas Ecological Reserve, due to anthropogenic impacts and deforestation, the forest area has been drastically decreasing due to a lack of education and environmental control. Therefore, this research seeks to estimate the deforestation rate of the Los Ilinizas Ecological Reserve and describe the change in land use in the 10-year period 2013-2023, using LANDSAT 8 satellite images taken on different dates, and analyzed by remote sensing and GIS, obtaining the deforestation rate and the change in land use in a period of 10 years. The images from 2013 and 2023 were obtained from the digital repository of the United States Geological Service (USGS). Using Catalyst software, the supervised classification process was carried out for the years 2013 and 2023, through the analysis of objects including 5 categories: Forest, Agricultural Land, Clouds, Cloud Shadow, and Bare Land. The information was processed with ArcGIS and QGIS, resulting in a deforestation rate of - 2.60% in the period from 2013 to 2023, showing the decrease in forest cover in the reserve, due largely to the expansion of the agricultural frontier, poor citizen education, and the lack of environmental control by the authorities.