Sixty years of land-use and land-cover change dynamics in a global biodiversity hotspot under threat from global change

Abstract

Constitución County in Chile shows one of the highest landscape transformations in the world due to the expansion of forest plantations. This work describes the land use/cover dynamics over a long period extending over 60 years in Constitución County. The results showed that 60% of the county extent was covered by natural vegetationt in 1955. However, forest plantation increased to 36% by 1975 and reached 72% by 2014. This expansion was mainly achieved by replacing native vegetation revealing evidence of the impact of forest plantations on native vegetation even before decree-law 701 (1974). Forest plantation expansion produced fragmentation and loss of natural habitat, and 50% of the remaining habitats showed low habitat quality by 2014. Finally, in 2017 a wildfire burned 77% and 42% of the remaining native forest and shrubland. These results showed the long-lasting impact of forest plantations, underpinning the need to move towards a new sustainable forest model.