Analyzing land cover change dynamism through a GIS-based method: application to Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain)

Abstract

Landscapes are dynamic areas which can be studied from the perspective of different, but related, disciplines. The application of GIS methods to study landscape change is an interesting resource to help understand and explain landscape dynamics. Thus, the objective of this paper is to characterize land cover dynamism and identify land cover change 'hotspots'. The method used here generates raster maps in which each pixel value represents the number of times each pixel has changed land cover between 1990-2018. Furthermore, it provides three of these maps, since it works with the 3 taxonomic levels of Corine Land Cover datasets, giving us different levels of detail in the analysis. On the other hand, the statistical treatment of the data has been done at the municipal level. The most important results reveal that Aguimes is the municipality with the most dynamic land cover change in the three levels, while Tejeda, in level 1, and Valsequillo, in levels 2 and 3, have the least changing land cover. These outputs are complemented with other statistical analyses which allow the integration of different data types such as those related to population, tourism and agriculture. Subsequently, some of the methodological issues and findings are discussed and put in context with the scientific literature.