Journal of Hydrology 395 (2010) 256–263

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Journal of Hydrology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhydrol

Application of GIS and remote sensing techniques in generation

of land use scenarios for hydrological modeling
F. Oñate-Valdivieso a,⇑, Joaquín Bosque Sendra b
a
Unidad de Ingeniería Civil, Geología y Minas, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, C/. Marcelino Champagnat S/N, 1101608 Loja, Ecuador
b
Departamento de Geografía, Universidad de Alcalá, C/. Colegios 2, 28801 Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o s u m m a r y

Article history: This research studies the change in land use in a binational hydrographic basin in South America. In addi-
Received 8 June 2010 tion, a future perspective for land use is generated according to the trends in the development observed.
Received in revised form 13 October 2010 A multi-temporal analysis of land use change is carried out and variables that can explain the observed
Accepted 22 October 2010
transitions will be selected. The relations between changes and explicative variables are studied in order
This manuscript was handled by
to stochastically model future land use maps. Persistence was found to be the predominant state. Higher
K. Georgakakos, Editor-in-Chief, with the transitions were observed in the zones of boundaries between categories. Biophysical variables had the
assistance of V. Lakshmi, Associate Editor most explicative power with a better performance of the model based on logistic regression than the one
made by using neural networks.
Keywords: Ó 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Land use change model
Hydrological scenario
LCM
Calibration of parameters
Sensitivity analysis

1. Introduction
The transition processes among land cover are the result of
complex interactions among physical, biological, economic and
social factors. In most cases, these factors have influence on the
production of erosive processes, an increase of surface runoff,
changes in biodiversity, etc. (Mas, 1999). The generation of land
use scenario towards a horizon year can be done based on a
multi-temporary analysis of the changes in land use that have
occurred in the research area and their correlation with established
variables, which can explain, to some extent, these changes. The
analysis and modeling of change of land use identifies its causes,
its location and the exact moment when they happened. The anal-
ysis and modeling uses are varied; papers on degradation and
desertification can be found (Huete et al., 2003; Geerken and Ilaiwi,
2004), droughts (Bayarjargal et al., 2006), floods (Liu et al., 2002),
urban growing (Van Vliet et al., 2009), etc.
The detection of changes in land use can be carried out based on
two procedures: first, to do the class assigning from the obtained
classification of the images from the satellite on different dates
in order to identify changes. Then, the changes are obtained based
on a simultaneous analysis of images from different dates and then
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +593 72570275; fax: +593 72584893.
E-mail addresses: fronate@utpl.edu.ec (F. Oñate-Valdivieso), Joaquin.bosque@
uah.es (J. Bosque Sendra).
to assign the thematic classes (Van Oort, 2006; Coppin et al., 2004).
Each of these procedures presents different reliable degrees and
accuracy according to each case application. The analysis carried
out based on the first approach is the most used in the bibliography
(Pontius et al., 2004). The quantization of changes is done through
a cross tabulation analysis of the land use at two different times
(Pontius et al., 2004; Serra et al., 2008). Like this, the persistence,
profit, loss and exchanges of each of the land uses considered are
determined.
In order to model the spatial patterns of the changes of land use
two approaches prevail: (a) Models based on regression and (b)
models based on spatial transition. The first establish relations be-
tween wide range of explanatory and predictor variables and the
observed changes in land use. Later, these variables will be used
to estimate the location of future changes in the landscape. The
influence of these local factors over the change in occupation soil
can be modeled as a function of the declining distance in which
influence decreases with the distance increase. The influence also
decreases by using variables distributed spatially such as the
edaphological type, the slope and the elevation, whose influences
are given by their geographic location.
Generally, in the modeling based on regression different ap-
proaches have been used, such as linearization of an exponential
relationship as in logistic regression, non-linear, and the ones that
are connected to neural networks (Mas et al., 2004; Pijanowski
et al., 2005). On the other hand, models based on spatial transitions

0022-1694/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2010.10.033
 F. Oñate-Valdivieso, J. Bosque Sendra / Journal of Hydrology 395 (2010) 256–263
cover mainly the stochastic techniques, which are based on the
Markov Chain Method and the cellular automaton (CA) (Pontius
and Malanson, 2005; Van Vliet et al., 2009). These models assume
explicitly that the nearby areas have influence on the transition
probability of the area or main cell.
For the predictive modeling to be transformed into a useful tool,
it is necessary that they represent in a substantial way the magni-
tude of changes, the location of future changes and their spatial
patterns (Brown et al., 2002).
1.1. Objective
The objective of this paper is to generate a land use scenario to-
wards the year 2012, which reflects the historic tendencies of
change in the Catamayo-Chira Binational Basin. For this purpose,
the changes in the land use are analyzed, the effect of the possible
explanatory variables of the changes is studied and a land use sce-
nario is developed through two different methodologies. At the
beginning of the article the area of study is described, and later
the procedures that have been used in the detection and quantifi-
cation of change are explained in detail.
The explanatory variables considered for the study and the
methodologies used are presented in order to model the change
in the land use towards the horizon year. Finally, the article is fo-
cused on the analysis of the relation among the explanatory vari-
ables, their transitions and the quality analysis of the obtained
results.
2. Methodology
2.1. Area of study
The Catamayo-Chira Binational Basin extends between the
coordinates 3°300 to 5°80 from the south latitude to 79°100 to
1°110 of the west latitude. It spreads through the south-west bor-
derline region between Ecuador and Perú with an extension of
17,199.19 km2. It has 817,968 inhabitants. The basin is formed in
the mountains of the Continental water divide (Ecuador) and ends
in the Pacific Ocean (Peru). It goes through the mountain ranges
and the coast. It has tropical weather, ecosystems, administrative
uses and systems, which determine the natural territorial and
the very diverse anthropic characteristics. The geography of the ba-
sin is abrupt and has altitude ranges that go between 3700 and 0 m
above sea level. In this scenario, 11 life zones can be found. These
go from the tropical dessert to the mountain rainforest. The yearly
mid precipitation ranges from 800 mm and varies between 10 mm
in the low zone to 1000 mm in its headwaters. In general terms,
14% of the surface of the basin is covered by tree vegetation, 41%
by dry forest, 30% by pasture, 10% for crops and a 5% by different
uses.
In this work, it has been considered as a study area. The portion
of the binational Catamayo Chira basin, which is located upstream
from the entrance of Poechos reservoir, occupies an area of
11,910.74 km2. The location of the study zone can be observed in
Fig. 1.
2.2. Land Change Modeler
The Land Change Modeler LCM from Idrisi Andes (Eastman,
2006) was used in order to carry out the research on the change
of land use. This software has been developed to analyze and pre-
dict the change in land cover and to evaluate the implication of
these changes in biodiversity. The LCM is sequential and produces
graphics and maps of the change in land use. It allows for deter-
mining the transition potential of the use of earth from one
257
Fig. 1. Location of the binational Catamayo Chira Basin.
category to a different one, taking into consideration the static or
dynamic variables, which will be the ones explaining the change.
For predicting the land use, planning elements that can stimulate
or limit the changes are included. Additionally, it includes tools
for the change of land use analysis and territorial planning.
2.3. Generation of historic maps of land use
In order to study the dynamics of land use, it is necessary to
have maps that reflect the status of land use at different times.
For creating these maps, three images from the study zone were
used: Landsat5 TM (02/11/1986), Landsat5 TM (24/07/1996),
Landsat7 ETM + (02/10/2001). These correspond to the dry season
in the study zone. This is in order to avoid possible classification
errors due to the seasonal change in vegetation. Since Landsat
images are being used, the scale of this paper is 1:100,000
(Chuvieco, 2002, p. 163).
The geometric correction of the images was carried out based
on checkpoints taken over the image. For the topographic correc-
tion the Civco Method (1989, quoted by Chuvieco (2002, p. 275))
was used. The atmospheric correction was done using the Chavez
Method (1986, quoted by Chuvieco (2002, p. 272)). A cloud mask
was elaborated by using the Saunders and Kriebel algorithm
(1988, quoted by Chuvieco (2002, p. 289)). Through the minimum
spectral angle method (Richards and Jia, 2006, p. 368; Chuvieco,
2002, p. 353), the images from the seven predominant covers of
the Catamayo Chira basin were classified in a monitored way:
natural forest, trees, dry forest, pasture, rice, cane and corn. This
was done taking into consideration the spectral signatures from
training sites which have been selected. The classified images
underwent a mode filter with the purpose of eliminating the salt-
and-pepper effect. The category validation was done through 100
observations taken in the area and a geo-referenced observation
through GPS. The purpose is to determine the number of observa-
tions that match the classification that has been done and to pres-
ent the results with a percentage. Finally, a re-classification of
images was done. The categories were grouped as follows: natural
forest and trees as tree vegetation; the cane growing, corn and rice
as crops. The dry forest and pasture categories were maintained. It
is important to mention that the high plateau cover and the clouds
were grouped into one category called no data, which is considered
to be non-dynamic throughout time.
With this procedure three maps of land use for 1986, 1966, and
2001 were generated.
258 F. Oñate-Valdivieso, J. Bosque Sendra / Journal of Hydrology 395 (2010) 256–263
2.4. Detection of changes and explicative variables
After the maps of land use for 1986, 1996, and 2001 were ob-
tained, we decided to analyze the changes that occurred between
1986 and 1996 in order to obtain from the interaction of such
changes with possible explicative variables a predictive model
which will be validated through the comparison with the obtained
map for 2001.
The changes that occurred were studied by applying the meth-
odology proposed by Pontius et al. (2004), which determined the
persistence, profit, loss, and interchanges among the thematic cat-
egories considered in each map of land use in terms of the analysis
of a cross tabulation among them. The changes that occurred be-
tween the two analyzed years (1986, 1996) were identified and
each one of them was considered as an independent submodel of
transition that relates the observed changes with a certain number
of variables that explain such changes.
Qualitative explanatory variables are introduced into the calcu-
lation using a transformation based on empirical likelihood meth-
od (Kleinbaum and Klein, 2002, p. 101). In this case, calculate the
probability of a change in land use based on the existence of a par-
ticular type of soil edaphic (variable quality), in this way, the map
categorical pedological soil type becomes a continuous map of
probability of occurrence of a particular land use transition,
depending on soil edaphic, so get as many maps processed soil
type as many transitions occur in the study area.
The explicative variables that integrate each sub model of tran-
sition were selected according their explicative potential which
has been evaluated through the Cramer’s V coefficient. This V coef-
ficient compares the explicative variables, one at a time, with the
thematic categories of the map of land use in 1990 in which values
similar or higher to 0.40 were accepted (Eastman, 2006). In some
cases, it was necessary to practice with several combinations of
explicative variables until obtaining the most favorable adjustment
between them and transitions. Six explicative variables of biophys-
ics order that prepare for the occurrence of the different occupa-
tions were considered: The elevation (DEM), land slope, total
annual precipitation, distance to watercourse, distance to the ini-
tial location of the coverage and the type of land. As explicative
anthropic variables, the distance to communication means and
the distance to cities were selected, considering that the presence
of roads and the closeness to cities are factors that motivate and
facilitate the agricultural and wood exploitation and that can also
directly affect in the use or coverage change.
2.5. Modeling of the land use change
According the selected explicative variables, the probability of
occurrence in each transition was calculated through the applica-
tion of two different alternatives of modeling: through logistic
regression (Kleinbaum and Klein, 2002, p. 4) between the observed
changes and the possible variables that explain such changes, and
through neural networks of multilayer perceptions (Pijanowski
et al., 2002; Chuvieco, 2002, p. 412), which model the land use
change in terms of the understanding of the existent relation be-
tween the changes and the explicative variables.
The modeling of the land use change to the horizon year (2001)
was developed through the application of Markov chains, using the
coverage map of the final date (1996) and the transition probabil-
ity that has been already calculated. This modeling helped us to ob-
tain areas of profit and loss of each category in the horizon year.
The map of the future land use was defined through a procedure
of multiobjective allocation of land uses (MOLA) (Bosque and
García, 1999; Eastman, 2006); for this purpose, all the observed
transitions were considered, creating a list of host classes (that will
lose parts of land) and a list of demanding classes (that will gain
land). With the use of the selected explicative variables, the most
appropriate places for each occupation change are determined
and then a land that belongs to all the host classes is assigned to
the demanding classes. The results of land use reallocation were
superimposed to produce the final result (Eastman, 2006).
With the described procedure, two maps that prognosticate the
land use for 2001 based on the modeling of the relation between
the observed changes and the explicative variables were generated.
Such relations were modeled with logistic regression and neural
networks.
2.6. Validation of the land use models and generation of scenarios
For the validation, the map extracted from the 2001 image was
considered as a referent, using confusion matrixes for the study of
the correspondence between the reference map and the ones ob-
tained through neural networks and logistic regression. It helped
to determine the forecast errors of the land use according to each
established model, as well as the omission and commission errors
that have been made. The global reliability of the classification was
calculated from the confusion matrix, as the relation between the
number of pixels which have been correctly assigned and the total
number of pixels of the image (Chuvieco, 2002, p. 492), and the
adjustment between the reference map and the maps generated
through the Kappa index (Pontius et al., 2001).
Once the adjustment was analyzed, a land use map towards
year 2012 was generated. For this purpose, the land use maps of
1996 and 2001, the explicative variables selected for each transi-
tion, and a model that has the best capacities were considered. In
a future study, that map will be used as a scenario that will repre-
sent the vegetation status in the horizon year if its evaluation
keeps the observed historical tendency. Its effect will be analyzed
through a semi-distributed hydrological model of the already men-
tioned study area.
3. Analysis of results
3.1. Change detection
Table 1 shows the cross tabulation summary done between the
maps of 1986 and 1996; here you can observe a predominance of
persistence in all the coverage (diagonal values) equivalent to the
80.5% of the total surface of the study area; moreover, you can ob-
serve an increase in the shrub-type vegetation area and dry forest,
as well as a decrease of the grassland and cultivation surfaces. The
increase of shrub-type vegetation has been produced with higher
intensity in zones initially occupied by grassland.
Cultivation areas grew up taking mainly dry forest areas which
present a general loss due to the changes to dry forest, grassland,
and shrub-type vegetation. These decreases can possibly be attrib-
uted to the abandonment of agricultural zones that have caused by
different socio-economic factors such as the limited availability of
water resources, high production costs and migration. The increase
of dry forest areas is produced equally in zones that were initially
occupied by shrub-type vegetation, crops, and grassland. The
majority of changes have been produced mainly in zones that are
in contact among coverage. This happens because crop areas in
the low zone of the basin are increasing and they intrude on dry
forest zones; something similar occurs in the middle and high part
of the basin in which natural vegetation zones are used to extend
the surface of grassland and crops with agricultural purposes.
Grasslands could become cultivated zones if the farmer wants
them to be. When the crop zones are abandoned, they become
grassland and later, due to the natural regeneration, the shrub-type
vegetation comes back.
 F. Oñate-Valdivieso, J. Bosque Sendra / Journal of Hydrology 395 (2010) 256–263 259

Table 1
Cross tabulation of the studied coverage in 1986 (horizontal) and in 1996 (vertical).

Shrub-type vegetation Dry forest Grassland Crops Total

Shrub-type vegetation 111161.61 6678.70 51008.73 5369.52 174218.56
Dry forest 16134.60 204018.96 18600.04 14461.56 253215.16
Grassland 32327.18 15217.83 433629.25 8891.21 490065.48
Crops 1177.26 9707.99 6198.05 14243.09 31326.38
Total 160800.65 235623.48 509436.08 42965.38 2367935.15

3.2. Explicative variables
Table 2 shows the association level that exists between contin-
uing explicative variables and the studied coverage in the study
zone. The weakest explicative variable is the distance that exists
to the rivers with values lower than the tenth decimal. Its limited
association with the analyzed coverage can be caused by the
topography that is notably irregular in the study zone. We hope
to have higher values in the case of crops since higher agricultural
surfaces can be found in the surroundings of the water courses.
The slope is a variable that shows limited association with the
existent land uses and distance to roads (Table 2). The total annual
precipitation shows low levels of association with the considered
coverage, which are higher to the ones observed for the case of
the slope. The distance to cities show low association with grass-
land and crop zones, although it presents an acceptable value with
the coverage of dry forest. The highest association is noticed be-
tween the elevation (DEM) and the analyzed land uses (Table 2),
which help us verify the supposed initial observation that the ele-
vations prepare for the existence of determined vegetal species.
High levels of association can also be observed between the dis-
tances to zones that presented dry forest, shrub-type vegetation,
and grassland in 1986 and the land uses in 1990. We can suppose
that the proximity between the different land uses can facilitate
great interchanges of land use.
The presence of dry forest (Table 2) is predominantly related to
the elevation and distance to zones of shrub-type vegetation in
1986. This fact could explain this type of land use in low-elevation
zones and the observed changes of shrub-type vegetation to dry
shrub in zones with relatively low elevation.
Grasslands show more association with distance to grasslands
and dry forest in 1986 (Table 2). This can be a important factor of
an increase in the grassland zones which are mostly covered by
dry forest. Crops show more relation with elevation and distance
to grassland coverage in 1986 (Table 2). This situation is explained
by the fact that crops are present in relatively low zones and, in
many cases, the abandoned agricultural zones are naturally covered
by grass due to their proximity to grassland zones and vice versa.
None of the analyzed explicative variables presented a signifi-
cant level of association with the occurrence of shrub-type vegeta-
tion. The low explicative power of the considered variables can
possibly be attributed to the fact that shrub-type vegetation is
originated through a process of natural regeneration that is condi-
tioned by biological factors such as the level of competence among
seedlings and the distance to adult shrubs with the closest amount
as well as the distance to other woody species (Pérez-Ramos,
2007). The factors of the physical environment also exert a signif-
icant influence on regeneration, thus, highlighting soil water avail-
ability, light intensity at the understory, and other edaphological
parameters related to fertility, acidity or thickness of the layer of
fallen leaves (Pérez-Ramos, 2007). It is clear that none of these fac-
tors was considered in this study, especially due to the difficulty of
charting the determining factors mentioned above and the details
that they require, which are higher than the scale used in this
work.
The type of soil does not present a level of association, which is
relevant to the presence of shrub-type vegetation. The remaining
occupations of soil present values higher than 0.30, which, accord-
ing to Eastman (2006), can be useful to model the change in occu-
pation of soil.
3.3. Submodels of transition
In several cases, submodels of transition included explicative
variables which presented values that were higher than the Cra-
mer’s V. In other cases, it was necessary to consider variables that,
although they presented values of this parameter, contributed to
the improvement of the correlation between explicative variables
and transitions. In Table 3 the different submodels of transition,
the variables that are part of these submodels, and the results of
the calculated logistic regression are shown. The coefficients that
affect each explicative variable in the logistic regression equation,
and the correlation degree between variables and transitions (ROC)
are included.
It can be seen in Table 3 that, in all cases, the correlation be-
tween transitions and explicative variables (ROC) exceeds 80%.
The sign of the coefficients of the logistic regression equation al-
lows us to know if the relation between the explicative variables
and the transition is direct or inverse. It can be observed that the
elevation (DEM) has inversely related transitions whose final occu-
pation requires low elevations (crops, shrub-type vegetation) and
directly with transitions that require medium or high elevations

Table 2
Cramer’s V coefficient: association level of the quantitative, explicative variables and the studied land uses.

Shrub-type vegetation Dry forest Grassland Crops

DEM 0.000 0.497 0.522 0.683
Slope 0.000 0.105 0.185 0.163
Edaphic soil type 0.000 0.341 0.434 0.373
Total annual precipitation 0.000 0.233 0.318 0.229
Distance to rivers 0.000 0.019 0.060 0.048
Distance to dry forest in 1986 0.000 0.443 0.837 0.673
Distance to shrub-type vegetation in 1986 0.000 0.654 0.431 0.416
Distance to crops in 1986 0.000 0.321 0.102 0.271
Distance to grassland in 1986 0.000 0.267 0.642 0.747
Distance to roads 0.000 0.286 0.104 0.129
Distance to cities 0.000 0.359 0.141 0.184
260 F. Oñate-Valdivieso, J. Bosque Sendra / Journal of Hydrology 395 (2010) 256–263

Table 3
Results of logistic regression: modeled transitions (submodels of transition), correlation degree (ROC), explicative variables and coefficients of each explicative variable in the
regression equation.

Transition ROC Term Coefficient in the logistic regression equation

From shrub-type vegetation to dry forest 0.9619 Independent 11.64781610
Soil type 2.31351393
Distance to cities 0.73700496
Distance to roads 0.01894947
Distance to dry forest in 1986 1.24138015
Dem 1.73454320
From shrub-type vegetation to grasslands 0.8550 Independent 29.30334746
Soil type 3.93446790
Distance to cities 0.46821253
Distance to grasslands in 1986 1.12111169
Dem 2.70293381
From shrub-type vegetation to crops 0.9511 Independent 23.61843169
Soil type 10.16724732
Distance to cities 0.21055266
Distance to roads 0.35086532
Distance to grasslands in 1986 0.82993113
Dem 2.63246543
From dry forest to shrub-type vegetation 0.9262 Independent 7.52194619
Dem 2.01211903
Soil type 0.02095232
Distance to cities 0.31118093
Distance to shrub-type vegetation 1.07188171
Soil type 2.07990532
From dry forest to grasslands 0.9023 Independent 18.71824490
Dem 3.08577471
Soil type 1.90792026
Distance to cities 0.15072886
Distance to grasslands in 1986 0.81043991
From dry forest to crops 0.8901 Independent 7.66879065
Soil type 4.21369442
Distance to cities 0.01049975
Distance to roads 0.15799291
Dem 0.78416923
Distance to crops in1986 0.81895196
From grassland to shrub-type vegetation 0.8740 Independent 7.57213473
Dem 1.68691095
Soil type 0.93310520
Distance to shrub-type vegetation in 1986 1.24074251
From grassland to dry forest 0.9794 Independent 17.17056084
Distance to cities 0.66496870
Distance to roads 0.03044125
Distance to dry forest in1986 1.37560559
Dem 2.14996078
Soil type 8.64315221
From grassland to crops 0.9298 Independent 16.12339406
Soil type 3.11453739
Distance to cities 0.15612132
Distance to cities 0.47700557
Dem 0.67087987
Distance to crops in 1986 1.68747988
From crop to shrub-type vegetation 0.9031 Independent 4.23241181
Dem 1.63607407
Soil type 0.28243151
Distance to shrub-type vegetation in 1986 1.31503270
From crop to dry forest 0.8137 Independent 1.54771212
Dem 1.18424277
Distance to roads 0.12008042
Distance to dry forest in1986 1.30541035
Soil type 1.40525690
From crop to grassland 0.8082 Independent 13.06317561
Soil type 3.75104014
Dem 2.36610567
Distance to grasslands in 1986 0.90143128

(grasslands and shrub-type vegetation). Soil type is directly related directly related to the occurrence of occupations of the forest type
to almost all of the transitions because soil characteristics deter- and inversely related to occupations of the agricultural type. The
mine the type of occupation. The distance to cities and roads is distance to initial occupations in 1986 is inversely related to the
 F. Oñate-Valdivieso, J. Bosque Sendra / Journal of Hydrology 395 (2010) 256–263 261

current occurrence of all of the occupations; thus, confirming ini- error for the validation phase, reaches values lower than
tial assumptions. 0.0022. Accuracy in modeling transitions exceeds 70% in all
The application of Multilayer Perceptrons Neural Networks cases. Due to the theoretical conception of neural networks, rela-
(MLP) to the study of the relation between the analyzed transi- tions between explicative variables and transitions to be mod-
tions and the possible explicative variables allows us to verify eled depend upon weights with which the activation functions
that the RMSE in the training phase, as well as the calculated in the neural network. This situation makes it difficult to inter-
pret the existing relations when the black-box-type procedure is
applied.
Table 4
Likelihood of transition between occupations of soil.
The likelihood of transition calculated for each type of coverage
is shown in Table 4. The predominance of the likelihood of persis-
Shrub-type Dry forest Grassland Crops tence can be observed in this table, highlighting the likelihood of
vegetation
transition of crops to grassland and to dry forest as well as of
Shrub-type vegetation 0.8134 0.0595 0.1238 0.0033 shrub-type vegetation to grassland. The aforementioned informa-
Dry forest 0.0131 0.9223 0.0314 0.0332
tion suggests that when crop zones are abandoned, they have the
Grassland 0.0619 0.0156 0.9133 0.0091
Crops 0.0991 0.2656 0.1486 0.4867 most likelihood of transforming into dry forest zones than trans-
forming into grasslands, possibly due to climate conditions of

Fig. 2. Maps based on logistic regression and neural networks (MLP) compared with the map extracted from the 2001 image.
262 F. Oñate-Valdivieso, J. Bosque Sendra / Journal of Hydrology 395 (2010) 256–263

water stress in the low zones of the surveyed area, in which the
largest crop areas are located. In the high zones, rainforests are
being deforested and transformed into grasslands for livestock pur-
poses. A transition to crop zones is less likely due to topographic
conditions or to dry forest because of the climate conditions. Grass-
lands have more likelihood of persistence rather than transition to
other types of coverage.
Crops have an approximately 50% likelihood of presenting per-
sistence; this is possibly because of the existence of zones exclu-
sively dedicated, and for long periods of time, to growing sugar
cane in the middle part of the basin, rice in the low middle part,
and corn in the northwest. On the other hand, the other crop zones
are near the existing rivers and they are subject to variations in the
types of crops, abandonment due to drought, or destruction caused
by floods. For this reason, these zones are more susceptible to suf-
fer a transition. If this fact is considered, it is reasonable to think
that the likelihood of persistence of crops is low.
3.4. Models for change in land use and validation
In Fig. 2, land use maps obtained through logistic regression and
neural networks are presented. These maps forecast changes, ob-
Table 5
Confusion matrix between the map extracted from 2001 image and the map created
through neural networks (MLP) ((1) shrub-type vegetation, (2) dry forest, (3)
grassland, (4) crops).
Map of 2001 (reference) Total
1 2 3 4
Map 2001 MLP
1 145,457 10,654 51,990 4060 212,161
2 13,828 256,148 29,052 10,245 309,273
3 45,660 20 054 489,723 17,822 573,259
4 568 13 998 4,742 14,845 34,153
Total 205,513 300,854 575,507 46,972 1,128,846
Omission 29.2 14.9 14.9 68.4
error
served between 1986 and 1996, for 2001. The maps obtained can
be visually compared to the land use map of the 2001 image.
Comparing the map obtained through logistic regression with
the map extracted from the 2001 image, we can observe a great
similitude in the areas with shrub-type vegetation, dry forest,
and grassland; but, the growing areas have the greatest differences,
si they underestimating the areas observed in the image of com-
parison. If we compare the map obtained through neural network
with the map extracted from the 2001 image, we can observe that
there is an overestimation of the areas covered by shrub-type veg-
etation, grassland and crops, and there is a certain underestimation
of the areas of dry forest. We can even see the presence of certain
pixels (in the south part of the map) corresponding to the dry
forest, in zones in which the biophysical conditions would limit
their presence.
In Table 6, the confusion matrix between the map extracted
from the 2001 image and the map created through logistic regres-
sion is shown. We can see that there is a higher number of pixels
that shows correspondence among the thematic types of both
maps. On the other hand, there is a considerable amount of pixels
(37,593) which, besides belonging to shrub-type vegetation in the
map of 2001, has been classified as grassland in the map created by
logistic regression. A similar case is the one with the grassland in
the 2001 image that has been modeled through logistic regression
as shrub-type vegetation (33,203 pixels) or dry forest (19,690 pix-
els). The commission errors reach a maximum value of 42.5% for
the crops and 52.3% corresponding to errors of omission.
In Table 7, the values of global reliability calculated from confu-
sion matrix included in Tables 5 and 6, the statistic Kappa and the
correlation coefficient between the reference map of 2001 and the
Error
maps of land use generated with logistic regression and neural net-
commission
works are shown. It can be observed that the map created through
logistic regression has a total reliability of 86%, a Kappa index of
31.4 0.901 and a correlation coefficient of 0.941. These values reach
17.2
acceptable levels that guarantee the adjustment between the
14.6
56.5 calculated model and the reference map. These values exceed
significantly the ones reached by the map obtained through neural
networks.

Table 6
Confusion matrix between the map extracted from the 2001 image and the map
created through logistic regression (LogReg) ((1) shrub-type vegetation, (2) dry forest,
(3) grassland, (4) crops).

Map of 2001 (reference) Total Commission

error
1 2 3 4
Map 2001 (RegLog)
1 162,437 10,262 33,203 3111 209,013 22.3
2 3909 269,829 19,690 5905 299,333 9.9
3 37,593 12,348 516,059 15,528 581,528 11.3
4 1574 8415 6555 22,428 38,972 42.5
Total 205,513 300,854 575,507 46,972 1,128,846
Error of 21.0 10.3 10.3 52.3
omission

Table 7
Validation parameters between the map extracted from the 2001 image and the maps
created through logistic regression (LogReg) and neural networks (MLP).

2001 MLP 2001 LogReg

Global reliability (%) 80.27 86.00
Kappa 0.862 0.901
R 0.911 0.941
Fig. 3. Scenery of land use projected by 2012.
 F. Oñate-Valdivieso, J. Bosque Sendra / Journal of Hydrology 395 (2010) 256–263
If we compare the results of the Tables 5 and 6 with each other,
we can observe that the projection of land use obtained through
logistic regression shows less error of omission and commission.
On the other hand, the estimate errors of the coverage occurrence
is also fewer. The Table 7 shows interesting results of the model
obtained through logistic regression, which again exceed the ones
obtained through neural networks. All these facts make us assume
that the logistic regression may show better results if it is applied
in creating the model of land use by 2012.
Crops have become the most difficult land use to predict using
neural networks or logistic regression because their presence not
only depends on biophysical and anthropic factors, as the ones
considered in this study, but socio-economic factors like supply
and demand of certain agricultural products, migration, economic
conditions of the region, political decisions, etc., as well as the
occurrence of weather events such as droughts or floods.
The scenery of land use projected for 2012 was carried out
by applying logistic regression; it can be observed in Fig. 3.
The great similarity that it has with the map created in 2001 is
observed. It can be attributed to the dynamism of the explanatory
variables.
4. Conclusions
The persistence of the different land occupations is the predom-
inant state in the study area; we can notice that the changes are pro-
duced in the boundary area among categories. The greater
explanatory power of the occurrence of the different coverage was
presented by biophysical variables, such as elevation (DEM, Digital
Elevation Model), the distance to the areas that showed dry forest,
shrub-type vegetation and grassland in the start date of the study.
The anthropogenic variables provided little explanatory power.
The best estimate of the land use change was produced when
applying logistic regression showing the result obtained through
neural networks and an overestimation of the shrub-type vegeta-
tion areas.
The most difficult land use to predict was of crops, due to its
dependence on socioeconomic and climate factors that apparently
exceed to the ones of biophysical and anthropic nature.
The scenery generated for 2012 showed a remarkable similarity
with the map of land use corresponding to 2001; this is due to little
dynamism of the explanatory variables. The difficulty of doing a
real representation of socioeconomic variables that could explain
the evolution of the land use, especially the changes produced in
the crops can additionally contribute to this fact.
The multi-temporal study of the land use change, its explana-
tory variables and the prediction based on logistic regression or
neural networks provide an interesting tool for the creation of
sceneries whose effect in the hydrological regime of a river basin
can be studied through a hydrological model.
263
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