From Land Degradation to Habitat Loss: A Qualitative Assessment of Vegetation Cover in Protected Areas of Arid Lands

The loss of wildlife habitat is often due to land degradation. This is particularly true in arid lands where vegetation is typically heterogeneous, low, sparse, and slow-growing. Contrary to what their designation suggests, Protected Areas (PA) are not exempt from these environmental changes. Assessing vegetation as a proxy for measuring habitat loss is challenging in dry lands even when employing radiometric data. Historical vegetation data and primary productivity rates allow for the quantification of plant cover but do not indicate the quality of habitat. This study examines three PAs in arid northern México in order to determine decline-absence of vegetative cover at pixel level (30 m spatial resolution). Methods used include: (1) supervised classification; (2) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index; and (3) empirical field data. Results provide an overview of habitat loss, emphasizing in qualitative terms five levels of change in vegetative cover.