Análisis multitemporal de la evolución de plantaciones de pino establecidas en la parroquia Palmira, cantón Guamote, mediante la aplicación de tecnologías geoespaciales.

Abstract

This research aims to carry out a multi-temporal analysis of the evolution of the Pinus radiata D. Don and Pinus patula Schiede plantations present in the Palmira parish through Landsat 5 and 8 satellite images via the Google Earth Engine platform. To this end, the supervised classification of the images corresponding to the parish in 1986, 1991, 2014, and 2019 was performed. To analyze changes in plantations, the categories were determined based on areas that contain pine plantations and zones where they are not present. In the current study, maximum and minimum values were scored. For 1986, 0.44% of the territory was obtained, which is equivalent to 110.18 hectares, while in 2019, there was an increase to 4.45%, which presents a vaster extension of plantations with 1,104.18 area units. Regarding the pine cover, the changes were evaluated through the analysis of the normalized difference vegetation index, getting the most impressive results in 2019 with values between 0.063 and 0.897, which show positive benefits close to 1 with dense and well-developed vegetation. Concerning the analysis of the normalized difference humidity index in 1986, it presented 579.69 hectares with high humidity vegetation, while in 2019 it presented 2550.13 hectares which are classified as vegetation with high humidity. Therefore, an increase in moisture content is appreciated in the Palmira parish. Based on this analysis, a relationship to the growth in plant coverage is evidenced. Because of the presence of clouds in the study area, it is recommended to process satellite images with a percentage of cloud cover of less than 15%.