Abstract

Prognosis of land use in environments subject to desertification
Track: Environmental Management
Authors: Kelly de Oliveira Barros, Elias Silva, Carlos Alvares Soares Ribeiro, Vicente Soares, Julianne de Castro Oliveira, Frederico Moreira Martins

We used a combination of Cellular Automata/Markov Chain (CA-Markov) techniques within a GIS environment in order to predict land use/land cover changes in areas predisposed to desertification. This approach allowed for both quantitative and spatial forecasts. Despite of the average performance for the CA component, the overall quality of the model´s prediction capacity was still good, providing valuable insights on landscape evolution processes. This, in turn, can subsidize land use planning.