The Role of Railway Infrastructures in Land Use and Cover Change in MATOPIBA, Brazil

Abstract

Land use/cover change (LUCC) can both affect and result of complex natural and socio-economic processes. The highway system is a key component for LUCC, however the role of railway infrastructure as a driver of the changes has been hardly ever in debate. In Brazil the steadily rise on large scale agro husbandry production has been demanding for railway infrastructure in states such as Maranhão, Tocantins, Piaui and Bahia (MATOPIBA), where agro husbandry production is steadily rising. In this context, the objective of this work is to develop a spatially explicit model to explore the associations between railway infrastructure (tracks, rail yards e intermodal facilities) and LUCC in an area of 650.682 km² in MATOPIBA . The model used the Baysian method of Weights of Evidence to explore the spatial determinants of land use transitions and their spatial determinants as well its associations to railway infrastructure. The model was calibrated with 2000-2012 data. This modelling approach was able to identify which variables and its ranges that can be associated to LUCC in MATOPIBA and this model was further used to simulate future scenarios of land use change in the coming decades. Our results clearly show a clear trend of increasing agro husbandry production and a trend of decreasing in native vegetation. Our results also highlight that railway infrastructure can indeed be associated changes into spatial configuration of landscape mainly by attracting LUCC in the nodes of new railway infrastructures.