30 Years of Land Cover Changes Within a Global Deforestation Front: Insights From the Chaco Serrano Mountains

Abstract

The South American Gran Chaco is among the most threatened ecoregions worldwide. Although land use change in the plains of this region has been widely studied, less is known about the southern mountainous areas. Our main goal was to analyze the land cover change dynamics in the Chaco Serrano between 1989 and 2019. We developed 3 land cover maps for the Sierras Chicas of central Argentina (1989, 2004 and 2019) and performed a land cover change analysis. Serrano forests lost 67,055 ± 8127 ha, and the annual rate of deforestation increased from −0.58 (1989–2004) to −1.87 (2004–2019). Between 1989 and 2019, grasslands exhibited the second-highest negative annual rate of change (−0.59). In 2019, shrublands became the dominant cover, increasing their size by 30% compared to 1989. Urban areas had the highest positive annual rate of change (5.60) and increased their extension from 1% of the total study area in 1989 to 5% in 2019. Invasive alien species expanded rapidly but only in specific areas. Our main findings show that land cover change processes in the Chaco Serrano mountains have differed from those observed in the plain areas of the Chaco and were consistent with those observed in other mountainous regions of the world. The current scenario for the Serrano forest is critical, and if conservation strategies are not applied in the near future, it could be expected that most of the Serrano forest, a unique ecosystem within the Chaco, would eventually disappear.