Land Use and Land Cover Changes in the Sergipe Semiarid Region

This study performed a temporal analysis of the land use and coverage in the semiarid region of Sergipe. We used Landsat-5 TM and Landsat-8 OLI satellite images acquired in 1992, 2003 and 2013. The maximum likelihood algorithm was used to detect six classes of land use and land coverage. We used a high spatial resolution Spot-5 scene as reference data to validate the assigned land use and coverage classification. Our results indicate that deforestation of native vegetation increased approximately 26% in the study area. The Caatinga vegetation was the most impacted, mostly converted to pastureland. In addition, it was observed that the deforestation increase in the study area negatively affected the preserved Caatinga secondary regrowth.

本研究针对塞尔希培（Sergipe）州半干旱区域的土地利用与覆被开展了时间序列分析。本研究采用1992年、2003年及2013年获取的Landsat-5 TM与Landsat-8 OLI卫星影像，通过最大似然算法识别出6类土地利用与覆被类型。本研究选取高空间分辨率的Spot-5影像作为参考数据，对已完成的土地利用与覆被分类结果进行精度验证。研究结果表明，研究区域内原生植被的毁林面积增长约26%。其中卡廷加（Caatinga）植被受影响最为严重，其绝大多数被转换为牧草地。此外，本研究观测到研究区域内的毁林扩张对受保护的卡廷加次生植被群落造成了负面影响。