Land Cover Change and Landscape Dynamics in the Urbanizing Area of a Mexican Border City

Land cover change associated to urbanization processes represents one of the most insidious forms of ecosystem alteration and links frequently to other types of environmental degradation. Timely and accurate remotely sensed detection of land cover change is therefore an essential requirement for a better understanding of coupled natural and human systems in urban expansion areas. Landscape dynamics represent the spatio-temporal manifestations of land cover change and are potentially useful to track the capacity of natural ecosystems to perform intrinsic functions that support socioeconomic systems. This capacity can be affected when changes occur in areas with highly vulnerable environmental conditions, such as in desert regions. Accelerated and miss-planned urban growth in the Mexican border region of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua threats surrounding desert ecosystems viability and jeopardizes the provision of supporting environmental services. In this work, we used an integrated remote sensing approach to assess land cover change from high-resolution imagery and to derive metrics to evaluate landscape attributes and dynamic during a five-year period. Landscape attributes were estimated for each of the observation dates and potential changes in landscape function and structure were evaluated. We found an increasing trend in landscape fragmentation, which might be related to many of the environmental problems faced by the city, including atmospheric and surface water pollution, and flood risk. An extended period of analysis and more detailed data are, however, essential to establish more robust relationships between the character of the recent urbanization process and the landscape dynamics in the region.