Land use and land cover changes in chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brazil

Information on Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) is important to help decision-makersabout the consequences of human activities on the environment. Understanding the action of biophysical and socioeconomic factors on temporal and spatial scales helps in understanding landscape transformations. Information about LULC are produced on global, national, and regional scales. Ibicoara is a municipality located in the state of Bahia, Brazil, within the region of Chapada Diamantina. Due to its rich scenery, such as mountains and numerous waterfalls, Ibicoara has been standing out in regional tourism, particularly in ecotourism. This work aims to analyze the changes in Land LULC in the municipality of Ibicoara-BA, over a period of 30 years (1990 to 2020), to identify the factors that have contributed to these changes. Therefore, we used data from the MapBiomas Project, geoprocessing techniques in the Geographic Information System (GIS) environment, and statistical analyses in an R environment. Sankey diagram, land use change matrix, and land use map were produced to analyze the LULC changes. The results indicate that municipality underwent severe landscape changes between 1990 and 2020, especially showing a reduction in vegetation, to the detriment of other classes, such as urban areas and agriculture. It was also noted that the implementation of the Agropole Mucugê-Ibicoara and the construction ofApertado’s damfavored the increase of agriculture due to greater access to water for irrigation.