A 17-year assessment of changes in biomass in the south of Chile, using Landsat satellite images

Southern Chile is recognized by different international organizations such as UNESCO, and Conservational International as an ecologically sensitive area. The country of Chile is home to one third of the earth's remaining temperate forests. The lack of multi-temporal studies that evaluate changes in land cover biomass make this study an important one for increasing awareness of how the evolution of the landscape affects environmental planning and development of legal precedents aimed at protecting this rich ecological habitat. In the study area, 40% of areas that traditionally supported row crops and pasture hay were replaced my forestry plantations and herbaceous successional vegetation. This replacement has impacted the Chilean people and their agricultural way of life. The results obtained depict the usefulness of Change Vector Analysis (CVA) as a technique to analyze changes in biomass over time.