Deforestation processes in the livestock territory of La Vía Láctea, Matagalpa, Nicaragua

Figures & data

Figure 1. Location map of La Vía Láctea territory, Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

Figure 2. Data processing flowchart.

Table 1. Description of land use and land cover classes types and bands combination.

Land cover	Land use	Description	Band combination^a
Forest land	Forest	Native forest with interventions for wood exploitation during the last year. Fragments of different sizes.	RGB 453RGB 432
Agricultural land	Pastures with high tree density	Pasture cover with dispersed trees with more than 30% of cover, associated with small areas of forest fallow and used for grazing.	RGB 453RGB 432
	Pastures with low tree density	Pasture cover with dispersed trees with less than 30% of cover, associated with small areas of forest fallow and used for grazing.
	Degraded pastures	Areas without permanent vegetation. These are the covers represented by lands with pastures and weeds, forming associations of secondary vegetation, which is connected to the extensive management of livestock.
	Monoculture Pastures	Pasture dominated by improved grass species without tree.
	Agricultural areas (annual and perennial crops)	Annual, transitory, or permanent crops, in which the parcel sizes are very small, and the distribution pattern of the lots is too intricate to represent them cartographically in an individual way.	RGB 453RGB 432
Urban Areas	Urban Areas	Lands modified by human activities, including all kinds of habitation, transportation facilities, and interior urban green zones and water bodies.	RGB 453RGB 432

^aBand combination used for identification in the satellite image. Source: (Rosales-Ibarra, 2013)

Table 2. Landscape metrics used for fragmentation analysis, selected from Fragstats (McGarial & Marks, 1995).

Name of the Metric	Description
Number of patches (NP) NP = ni (2)	Number of Patches in the Landscape. ni: Number of class i patches in the landscape
Average patch size (MN) $MN=\frac{{\sum }_{j=i}^n{x}_{ij}}{n_i}$(3)	Sum of the areas of all patches present in the landscape divided by the number of patches (ha).
Area-weighted Mean Shape Index (AWMSI) $AWMSI=\sum _{i-l}^m\sum _{j=l}^n[\frac{0.25\cdot p_{ij}}{\sqrt[2]{a_{ij}}}\ast \frac{a_{ij}}{A}]$ (4)	Weighted patch calculation based on size. Larger patches have greater weighting than smaller patches; it is calculated by averaging the shape of the patch. If the values are close to 1, the shape patterns are not circular; they are actually fragmented areas. Aij: average patch area, A: total patch area.
Mean Shape Index (MSI) $MSI=\frac{{\sum }_{i-l}^m{\sum }_{j=l}^n[\frac{0.25\cdot p_{ij}}{\sqrt[2]{a_{ij}}}\ast \frac{a_{ij}}{A}]}{NP}$ (5)	Calculates the complexity of the average patch shape compared to a standard shape, such as the circumference in the vector environment or the pixel in the raster environment. The shape of a patch is characterized by the length of its edges. Fragments that have an irregular shape as a result of the fragmentation of the forest, they tend to have longer edge lengths. it is interpreted that if the values are equal to 1, the shape patterns are circular and increase as the irregularity of the patch shape increases.
Edge Density (ED) $ED=\frac{E}{A}\left(10000\right)$ (6)	It is the sum total of the edge meters included in the landscape divided by the total landscape (square meters) multiplied by 10,000.
Shannon’s Evenness Index (SHEI) $SHEI=\frac{-{\sum }_{i=1}^m\left(p_i-Ln{P}_i\right)}{\mathrm{l}\mathrm{n}m}$ (7)	SHEI is equal to the sum, for all types of patches, of the proportional abundance of each type of tesserae multiplied by the Neperian logarithm of such proportional abundance. The measurement of area distribution among patches. It equals 1 when the distribution among patches is uniform, while it equals 0 when the landscape is dominated by a single type of patch.
Euclidean nearest neighbor distance (ENN)	Nearest neighbor distance is defined using simple Euclidean geometry as the shortest straight-line distance between the focal patch and its nearest neighbor of the same class. Even though nearest neighbor distance is often used to evaluate patch isolation, it is important to recognize that the single nearest patch may not fully represent the ecological neighborhood of the focal patch.

Figure 3. Land cover change (forest cover and agricultural cover) for the period 1978–2011, in La Vía Láctea territory, Nicaragua.

Figure 4. Dynamics of LULC change by year in La Vía Láctea territory, Matagalpa, Nicaragua (1978–2011), resulting from the interpretation of Landsat satellite images.

Table 3. Changes in land-use between 1978 and 2011 in La Vía Láctea territory, Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Area in hectares per use/year.

Year	1978		1986		1998		2011
Land use	Area (ha)	%	Area (ha)	%	Area (ha)	%	Area (ha)	%
Forests	158,092.4	61.5	21,741.0	8.5	12,650.7	4.9	10,556.4	4.1
Pastures with high tree density	67,877.3	26.4	187,809.9	73.0	77,101.7	30.0	80,119.9	31.1
Pastures with low tree density	24,742.0	9.6	12,020.0	4.7	51,410.6	20.0	36,881.1	14.3
Degraded Pastures	6,466.4	2.5	19,628.3	7.6	88,854.6	34.5	89,391.3	34.8
Monoculture pastures	0	0	11,573.3	4.5	19,395.8	7.5	35,456.4	13.8
Agricultural Areas	0	0	4,337.1	1.7	7,649.9	3.0	4,534.3	1.8
Urban areas	50.3	< 0.1	118.8	< 0.1	165.1	< 0.1	289.0	0.1
Total	257,228.4	100.0	257,228.4	100.0	257,228.4	100.0	257,228.4	100.0

Table 4. Changes transition matrices in La Vía Láctea territory from A) 1978–1986, B) 1986–1998, C) 1998–2011 showing the area (hectares) of land-use change between categories: (FO) Forests, (PHD) Pastures with high tree density, (PLD) Pastures with low tree density, (MP) Monoculture pasture, (DP) Degraded pastures, (AA) Agricultural areas, (UA) Urban areas, (cr) Change rate. The bolded figure is the sum of diagonals and represents the overall persistence (i.e., the landscape that did not change).

		To final state (1986)
A		FO	PHD	PLD	MP	DP	AA	UA	Total 1978
From initial state (1978)	FO	20,986.5	130,962.0	1,763.1	770.0	2,224.0	1,386.8	0	158,092.4
	PHD	538.9	53,369.0	5,077.5	2,289.6	4,466.7	2,123.5	12.1	67,877.3
	PLD	70	3475	3803	4973	12,365	0	56.4	24,742.0
	MP	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	DP	145.3	4	1376.5	3540.7	573.1	826.8	0	6466.4
	AA	0	0	0		0	0	0	0
	UA	0	0	0		0	0	50.3	50.3
Total 1986		21,741.0	187,809.9	12,020.0	11,573.3	19,628.3	4,337.1	118.8	257,228.4
cr (%)		−22	13.6	−8.6	0	14.9	0	11.3
		To final state (1998)
B		FO	PHD	PLD	MP	DP	AA	UA	Total 1986
From initial state (1986)	FO	11,848.4	5,689.6	1,696.3	387.3	1,933.9	185.5	0	21,741.0
	PHD	693.7	66,726.1	46,298.2	4,310.0	66,223.6	3,558.3	0	187,809.9
	PLD	56.0	2090.8	2438.8	944.9	6480.0	0	9.5	12,020.0
	MP	0	0	0	11,085.1	488.2	0	0	11,573.3
	DP	52.6	2285	814.5	2,648.8	13,728.9	78.8	19.7	19,628.3
	AA	0	310.2	162.8	19.7	0	3,827.3	17.1	4,337.1
	UA	0	0	0	0	0	0	118.8	118.8
Total 1998		12,650.7	77,101.7	51,410.6	19,395.8	88,854.6	7,649.9	165.1	257,228.4
cr (%)		−6.5	−10.5	19.9	6.7	20.8	7.4	4.2
		To final state (2011)
C		FO	PHD	PLD	DP	AA	MP	UA	Total 1998
From initial state (1998)	FO	9,574.8	2,048.6	65.4	842.8	0	119.1	0	12,650.7
	PHD	870.9	67,213.2	6,616.9	0	60.3	2340.4	0	77,101.7
	PLD	110.7	7,962.4	22,016.2	18,274.6	0	3046.7	0	51,410.6
	DP	0	2,339.6	7,908.8	62,698.9	150.2	15,722.3	34.8	88,854.6
	AA	0	0	0	3,293.3	4323.8	0	32.8	7,649.9
	MP	0	556.1	273.8	4,281.7	0	14,227.9	56.3	19,395.8
	UA	0	0	0	0	0	0	165.1	165.1
Total 2011		10,556.4	80,119.9	36,881.1	89,391.3	4,534.3	35,456.4	289.0	257,228.4
cr (%)		−2.2	0.5	−4.1	0.1	−6.3	7.8	7.2

Figure 5. Magnitude (%) of land-use gains and losses for each LULC in La Vía Láctea territory, Matagalpa, Nicaragua (a) 1978–1986, b) 1986–1998 and c) 1998–2011.

Table 5. Calculated landscape metrics from LULC classifications in La Vía Láctea territory (Matagalpa, Nicaragua) for 1978–2011. Number of patches (NP), Average patch size (MN), Index of the weighted average of the form by area (AWMSI), Index of the form average (MSI), Edge Density (ED), Shannon Equity Index (SHEI), Euclidean Mean Distance Nearest Neighbor (ENN).

	Composition		Shape				Configuration
Year	NP	MN	AWMSI	MSI	ED	SHEI	ENN
1978	187	1388.6	535	283	93.1	0.57	642.4
1986	252	1030.4	867	280	113.9	0.50	966.6
1998	268	1047.1	505	269	117.7	0.73	1389.1
2011	345	954.1	516	274	120.9	0.72	1363.3

Rosales-Ibarra, A. (2013) Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería. Manual para la interpretación de imagenes de sensores remotos de las principales coberturas y usos de la tierra de Costa Rica (1st ed.), San José, Costa Rica: MAG/INTA/FITTACORI/SUNII.

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