Land use changes and their perception in the Hinterland of Barranquilla, Colombian Caribbean
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemEditorial
MDPI
Materia
Remote sensing Visual interpretation Participatory mapping
Fecha
2019Referencia bibliográfica
SCHUBERT, H., RAUCHECKER, M., CABALLERO CALVO, A. y SCHÜTT, B. (2019). Land use changes and their perception in the Hinterland of Barranquilla, Colombian Caribbean. Sustainability, nº 11(23), 6729, p. 1-21. ISSN: 2071-1050. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236729
Patrocinador
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; ColBioDiv, project number: 01DN17006 & ColCari, project number: 01DN19004); German Research Foundation and the Open Access Publication Fund of the Freie Universität BerlinResumen
The coastal strip of the western peri-urban area of Barranquilla in the Atlántico Department
(Colombia) is experiencing changes in human-environment interactions through infrastructure,
residential, and tourism projects in a vulnerable landscape. In the hilly area, fragments of biodiverse
tropical dry forest still exist in various states of conservation and degradation. To understand the
interrelated social, economic, and ecological transformations in the area, we analyzed land use
change on the local scale including the local community’s perception, because the local community
is a key actor for sustainable land use. For the analysis of the interrelated social, economic, and
ecological processes, we combined visual interpretation of high-resolution satellite imagery, on-site
field land use mapping, and a spatial statistical analysis of the distribution of land use classes with
in-depth interviews and a participatory GIS workshop, thus benefitting from the complementary
methodological strengths of these approaches. The case study is the rural community of El Morro,
which exhibits the typical social, economic, and ecological changes of the coastal strip of the western
peri-urban area of Barranquilla. The local community perceives a continuous loss of forest area, but
observations from on-site field mapping cannot confirm this linear trend. We observed a gradual
replacement of traditional land uses such as smallholder agriculture, charcoal production, and cattle
breeding by services for tourism, gated community projects for urban dwellers, and infrastructure
projects; these spatial developments have several characteristics of rural gentrification. We conclude
that the drivers of environmental degradation have changed and the degradation increased. The
development projects of external companies have been rejected by the local community and have
induced environmental consciousness among community members. Thus, the local community has
become an advocate for sustainable land use in the study area.