Abstract

INSAURRALDE, Juan Ariel. Study of the evolution of remote-sensing spatial coverage in the southwest of the province of Chaco between 1989 and 2010. Rev. Univ. geogr. [online]. 2012, vol.21, n.1, pp. 31-57. ISSN 1852-4265.

This paper aims at analyzing the variations of spatial coverage in the southwest of the Province of Chaco, an area of recent agricultural expansion, through remote sensing techniques. The study presented here describes three major tasks that were accomplished: Pre-processing tasks corresponding to the preparation of satellite images; processing tasks by calculating cross tabulations; and, finally, the presentation of results through cartographic and tabular output. Thus, it was identified five clearly distinct coverage areas that show temporal and spatial variations. In particular, forests reveal a decrease of 47.64% in their total area, while crop areas show an increase of 65.46%; bare soil surfaces (soil 1 and 2), as a whole, show a variation of 62.3% and grassland cover, which happens to be the longest-temporal space, shows a slight positive variation of 10.62%.

Keywords : Remote Sensing; Southwest of the Province of Chaco; Spatial coverage; Detection of changes.