Author(s)

José Eduardo dos Santos¹, Angela Terumi Fushita¹, Imyra Maíra Martins de Souza², Lia Martucci Amorim², Valéria Aparecida David Andrade²

¹Department of Hydrobiology, Federal University of São Carlos, São Carlos, Brazil.
²Postgraduate Program in Ecology and Natural Resources, Federal Universityof São Carlos, São Carlos, Brazil.

Land use trajectory analysis provides both the time and kind of land cover changes to monitor land use dynamics. Land cover change trajectories for three different dates (1965, 1989 and 2014) extracted from satellite images by vectorization of the thematic information were studied This study was carried out on a cultural landscape (São Carlos municipality, SP, Brazil) with three major land use-cover classes (forest, agriculture and other uses). The results showed the spatio temporal variability of landscape pattern and forest and agriculture change trajectories. Analysis based on these landscape trajectories demonstrates that agriculture and forest cover changes have been caused by human activities. The results reflect the conflicting interactions between environmental and human systems in the study area. A key question is that the pressure exerted on forest land use-cover depends on the incentives that move society from a conflicting relation with a municipal territory. A more sustainable landscape transition and trajectory for São Carlos municipality are extremely dependent on the regulatory role of the government through strategies related to the implementation of specific categories of legally protected areas (Legal Reserves and Areas of Permanent Preservation).

Land Use-Cover, Change Trajectories, Landscape Sustainability, Legally Protected Areas, Remote Sensing

dos Santos, J. , Fushita, A. , de Souza, I. , Amorim, L. and Andrade, V. (2015) Agriculture and Forest Transition: Understanding of Land Use Change in a Cultural Landscape. Open Journal of Applied Sciences, 5, 797-807. doi: 10.4236/ojapps.2015.512076.