Conflicts and future scenarios of land use in eastern Mexico

Aim of study: To develop an analytical framework for analyzing and assessing the land-use changes and conflicts, based on low requirements of information and useful in developing countries. Additionally, to generate future trend and alternative scenarios to estimate the likely impacts of each use. Area of study: The analytical framework was tested in the Pixquiac sub-basin, Veracruz, Mexico. Material and methods: We used satellite imagery for the characterization of the study area, map algebra to determine changes in use over time and conflicts with potential uses, as well as Markov chains and cellular automata for the generation of trend scenarios. Main results: Our framework tested to be reliable. We detected a loss of forest cover of 653.12 ha from 2002 to 2018, and 5,299 ha of land use conflict. If the trend continues, an additional 279 ha of forest cover will be lost by 2042. Research highlights: We proposed a framework to analyze the dynamic of land use change in small watersheds where the urban use is the driving for changes to other land uses. Our method allowed capturing the transition between land uses and conflicts with the potentialities of the territory. In addition, given that most of developing countries lacks high-resolution spatial information our method would be useful for other regions of the world with similar conditions. Finally, various trend and alternative scenarios to evaluate the impact of the policies applied to the territory on land-use changes were obtained.