Análisis de la Variabilidad en la Cobertura de Manglares en las Islas Galápagos a Través de un Análisis Multitemporal con Imágenes Satelitales Landsat 7 y Landsat 8

The present work was based on an analysis of the changes in themangroves coverage in the Galapagos province and thevariability that it has presented in a period of twenty years,considering that mangroves are ecosystems that provideecological, economic, as well as cultural benefits, butundervalued due to what is being lost year after year due tohuman activities. The study area presented an extension of landof 822778.6 Ha and the methodology applied was to identify theareas where its vegetation cover was mangrove, for this the useof satellite images of the Landsat 7 and 8 sensors wereconsidered, for the years 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020respectively. Consecutively, maps of land use and vegetationcover corresponding to each year of study were made. The yearby-year comparison was analyzed and change matrices weregenerated, where it was observed that the year with the highestmangrove vegetation cover was 2020 with a total area of 3915.3Ha. Similarly, 2000 was identified as the year with the leastmangrove cover reflecting a total of 2977.6 Ha. The variation ofthese values responds to the high presence of associated speciessuch as “manzanillo”, “acacia” and “botoncillo”, in addition toenvironmental and meteorological changes. Finally, for thevalidation of results, two methods were used: a stratifiedsampling for supervised classification, and an analysis and comparison with other studies of mangroves in the GalapagosIslands.