Land cover changes: Regional verification of global trends with Australia and Argentina as a case study

Abstract

Land cover change is considered to be one of the main factors of global changes, including climate change and biodiversity loss. This research devoted to an analysis of land cover transformation at regional level, in Australia and Argentina, aiming to verify the global trends of the beginning of XXI century. Basing on the MODIS data, we use rasters for the years 2001, 2012, and 2020, and detect transitions between land cover categories. For the key time period of 2001-2012 we identify land cover transformation processes, compare studied countries, and verify some of the global trends. Then, we discuss some of the natural and anthropogenic factors of land cover changes. One of the most significant process for both countries found out is shrub encroachment, which is a global trend. It is observed on up to hundreds of thousands of square kilometres, and takes 2- 4% of the countries’ areas. Besides this, the widespread processes are the degradation of woody vegetation with an increase in contribution from open spaces in non-forest zones (2-3% of each country area), and overgrowing of croplands (2-3%). In Australia, we detect the increase in contribution from tree vegetation (2% of country area). In Argentina – decline in the contribution from shrublands (2% of country area). The share of total areas of land cover transformation is about the same for the study regions and is estimated about 13-15% of the countries territories.