Analysis of urban expansion and its relationship with climate change in Huancayo 1969-2019

Abstract

In recent decades urban expansion has indicated changes in the atmosphere and land. This article aims to analyze the relationship between urban expansion and climate change in the city of Huancayo in the period 1969-2019. Annual meteorological data from SENAMHI, demographic data from INEI for urban and rural population, and satellite images for land use change were used, and the Pearson correlation model was applied. From this, it was obtained that the average temperature suffered an increase of 1.87 °C, and the accumulated annual precipitation remained at constant peaks. In the case of the population, the urban zone presented an increase of 37.12% and in the rural zone a decrease of 50.57%. On the other hand, the change in land use was categorised into 6 classes, resulting in the following growth rates for the urban zone 2% and the agricultural zone 0.2%, in contrast to the forest zone, which showed a decrease of 0.7%. Finally, the analysis shows a strong direct correlation between the variables of mean temperature-urban and agricultural expansion (r= 0.646 and r= 0.278) with a significance of (α= 0.05). Therefore, it is necessary to implement urban planning measures in a context of climate change.