Cambios recientes en la ocupación del suelo de los parques nacionales españoles y su entorno

Abstract

In view of the need to monitor land use changes (often referred to by the English acronym LUCC) that have taken place in Spain’s national parks, as a means of preventing undesirable land change tendencies, a detailed analysis, following Pontius et al. (2004), is presented of LUCC in the national parks that comprise the network. To do this, the well-known Corine Land Cover (CLC) cartographic database is essential since it remains the only land use database that covers all of Spain for multiple time periods and having the same thematic classification for all three dates (1990, 2000 y 2006). As a result of the change analysis, the dynamics in all of the parks have been investigated and a series of indicators of land change dynamism have been developed in which the changes that present a risk to the natural values, ecosystem services or habitats have been identified. It is understood that the parks themselves, defined by boundaries within which strict restrictions are applied to the activities that are allowed to take place, cannot be conserved if in their immediate surroundings environmental degradation is permitted. For this reason, the study has investigated not only the parks that belong to the national network but also their neighbouring areas. The analysis permitted the change dynamics that affect the parks and their environs over two different periods (1990-2000 and 2000-2006) to be determined, and the risks existing, together with their temporal evolution, to be demonstrated.