Change detection: how has urban expansion in Buenos Aires metropolitan region affected croplands

Abstract

Cropland is one of the essential elements of our ecological systems for producing agricultural products. In developing countries, urban expansion is a frequently appearing phenomena, which is a type of land cover land use (LCLU) change. This change can drastically alter the features on the land surface including croplands. It can lead to detrimental consequences which has considerable effects on the social-ecological systems when croplands are lost. Argentina is an extremely agricultural intense developing country, and Buenos Aires province is a top agricultural production site and has been urbanizing during the last 30 years. Thus studying and analyzing the metropolitan area of this province will contribute to our understanding of the relationship between urban expansion and its effect on croplands. So far, no research has used measurable quantitative methodologies on the Buenos Aires metropolitan region (BAMR) to reveal the relationship between urbanization and cropland. By using 30-meter resolution Landsat images of June 1985 and July 2015, this study finds urban land has expanded from 937.16 km2 to 1835.47 km2, and 30.28% of the new urban lands comes from existing croplands.

Keywords

• urbanization
• agriculture
• social-ecological systems
• land cover
• land use