Dinàmica de les superfícies de conreu a Catalunya mitjançant teledetecció en el període 1987-2012

This paper presents a study of the changes that occurred in Catalonia
during the 25 years between 1987 and 2012 in the areas devoted to agriculture.
This study is based on data from the six editions of Land use and
land cover map of Catalonia (MUCSC, from Catalan) obtained through
automatic classification of Landsat satellite imagery, highlighting the advantages
of this type of information for the study of large land extensions in
long time series. The results show that the average area occupied by crops
in Catalonia over these years is 32 %, with rainfed crops predominating over
irrigated crops (24 % and 8 %, respectively) and herbaceous crops over woody
crops (20 % and 12 %, respectively). The area occupied by this cover has
been decreasing during the study period at an average rate of almost
8,000 ha/year, although the average acceleration (-47 ha/year2) seems to
indicate that the regression process has been slowing down, particularly in
recent years. This loss mainly affects rainfed crops, while irrigated crops
remain fairly stable, and it is mainly due to the abandonment of croplands
and the subsequent renaturation of fields, as well as to the increase in urbanized
areas (in this case particularly in the central coast regions). Despite
the losses, new cropland is appearing in the areas of Lleida and of the
Osona and Empordà regions.