Monitoring Changes in Ecosystems due to Agricultural Expansion in the Vaca Forest Reserve, Belize.
2024
MacSporran, Alice | Stuart, Neil
Belize is widely affected by deforestation as a result of subsistence-level agricultural expansion for crops and cattle. Belize currently monitors its forests using its Activity Data (AD), which is labour intensive and costly to maintain. Therefore, this research developed a supervised object-based classification method for monitoring agricultural expansion with high resolution (3m) multispectral PlanetScope imagery for 2017, 2020, and 2023. Analysis focused on the Vaca Forest Reserve (VFR) (178 km2) and the adjacent de-reserved area (55 km2). Within the reserve, forest cover decreased by 2.08 km2 between 2017 and 2023, with 1.69 km2 of this loss occurring between 2020 and 2023. Grassland cover increased by 2.25 km2 as a result of fires and agricultural expansion for cattle grazing, especially adjacent to the Guatemala border. The de-reserved area also saw increased grassland (1.36 km2) and decreased forest cover (-1.13 km2). The methodology was successful in classifying and quantifying most land uses classes, however, improvements are required such as inclusion of land use subclasses before it could replace the AD dataset as a means of monitoring agricultural expansion. The novel approach to assess land use change dynamics both within the reserve and the de-reserved area provides evidence that reinforces the concern that forest fragmentation increases following de-reservation. These findings quantify these differences and are therefore a valuable source of evidence about the rapidity and nature of changes occurring in and surrounding the VFR, which was until recently considered a key conservation buffer to the Chiquibul/Maya Mountain Massif.
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