Fig 1.
The Chocó-Darien Global Ecoregion (CGE): (a) estimated historical extent of Tropical Rain Forest (TRF) in South America: TRF-CGE (estimated TRF in CGE), TRF-Amz (estimated TRF in Amazon basin), and TRF-BrAt (estimated TRF in Brazilian Atlantic Forest). (b) The Chocó-Darien Global Ecoregion (CGE): This global ecoregion is formed by three smaller ecoregions: Magdalena-Urabá Moist forests (MgU), Chocó-Darién Moist Forests (ChD), and Western Ecuador Moist Forests (WEc). Other four ecoregions have small sections in the CGE: Eastern Panamanian Montane Forests (EPaM), South American Pacific (SAP) Mangrove, Amazon-Orinoco-Southern Caribbean (AOSC) Mangrove, and Mesoamerican Gulf-Caribbean (MGC) Mangrove.
Fig 2.
An example of the time series filtering procedure from 2009 to 2013 using the Gaussian weighted filter (GWF).
GWF improved the identification of land cover using the MODIS bands and indices. (a) A time series EVI pixel of woody vegetation before and after filtering; outliers are replaced with estimates calculated by the Gaussian weighted filter. (b) Temporal variation of 120 pixels corresponding to woody vegetation before filtering and (c) the same 120 pixels after filtering; the variance of these 120-time series is reduced. (d) Post filtering results–simplified to means, for 120 woody vegetation pixels, 116 grassland pixels, 542 palm plantation pixels, 99 settlement pixels, 101 water pixels, and 454 wetland pixels. GWF increased the differentiation among these land covers. The GWFs were applied using the Terrset software [61] with a temporal filter length of 5.
Fig 3.
Land-use and land-cover (LULC) change trends in The Chocó-Darien Global Ecoregion (CGE).
Significant correlation coefficients (R) are shown for the two temporal periods 2002–2010 and 2010–2015 (a). Significant P range values; P<0.001(***), P<0.01(**), and P<0.05(*). LULC maps for 2002, 2010 and 2015 are showed (b, c, d).
Table 1.
Correlations of land-use and land-cover (LULC) change trends among administrative divisions; The Chocó-Darien Global Ecoregion (CGE), Colombian CGE (Col CGE), Ecuadorian CGE (Ecu CGE), and Panamanian CGE (Pan CGE).
Pearson's correlation coefficient (R) are shown for two time periods 2002–2010 and 2010–2015. Significant codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05.
Fig 4.
Quantification of deforestation (deforestation drivers) and reforestation transitions from 2002 to 2010.
(a) Percentage of deforested area and net area deforested by every deforestation driver, and (b) percentage of reforested areas and net area reforested by every reforestation transition. The Chocó-Darien Global Ecoregion (CGE), Colombian CGE (Col CGE), Ecuadorian CGE (Ecu CGE), and Panamanian CGE (Pan CGE).
Fig 5.
Quantification of deforestation (deforestation drivers) and reforestation transitions from 2010 to 2015.
(a) Percentage of deforested area and net area deforested by every deforestation driver, and (b) percentage of reforested areas and net area reforested by every reforestation transition. The Chocó-Darien Global Ecoregion (CGE), Colombian CGE (Col CGE), Ecuadorian CGE (Ecu CGE), and Panamanian CGE (Pan CGE).