Changes of the land cover, according to the types of landscape described in the social metabolism. Case study: West of the Guamués Lake (lagoon of La Cocha) Colombia. 1989-2016

Abstract

The object of this article is to analyze the changes that land cover in the west of La Cocha lagoon has had since the year 1989 until 2016, through the use of the Corine Land Cover methodology. In turn, linking with the scenarios presented by Victor Toledo on social metabolism, in which the following environments are present: Environment Used (MAU, by its acronym in Spanish), Transformed Environment (MAT, by its acronym in Spanish), and Conserved Environment (MAC, by its acronym in Spanish).In the lagoon of La Cocha there are different types of ecosystems: the paramo, the high Andean jungle and the wetland. These ecosystems offer the community water supply services, water regulation, as well as cultural services. Reasons that have led to these being altered, being the change of the land's coverage one of these alterations.

The results identified nineteen types of coverage for the year of 1989 and twenty-one types of coverage for the year 2016, in the same way eleven exchange rates were identified. These exchange rates are directly related to proximal and adjacent causes or, in other words, to factors that affect the occurrence of those changes in coverage. Thus, in these 27 years analyzed, there is a decrease in the environmentally conserved MAC and the environment used MAU. Therefore, the transformed MAT environment has had an increase, mainly due to factors linked to violence, poor policies, lack of projects and lack of technical advice for farmers.