Global-scale monitoring of land cover and land use is rapidly maturing, with established methods ready to support natural lands extent mapping and loss to encroaching commodity land uses. While ‘last of the wild’ type maps have been prototyped, they lack spatial detail and methods for operational updating. A first step to monitoring the lands devoid of land use is to create a baseline natural lands extent map in which signs of land use expansion could be monitored. Natural lands would be characterized per pixel, by contiguous extent (fragments/landscapes), and disaggregated by ecoregion and dominant land use change driver.

Detecting disturbance within stable land cover is eminently feasible using alert systems, after which continued monitoring is needed to reveal the establishment of a formal land use. Classifying the extent and expansion of commodity land uses required for such continued monitoring is a more complicated objective. This project will support their efforts in this arena, expanding from existing tracking of human disturbances. Specifically, we will track vegetation disturbances within natural land with no establishment of land use (based on alert systems) and with establishment of intensive land use indicated by establishment of vertical structures, transport infrastructure, row crops, fenced pastures, forestry/estates, surface mining, etc. Conversion to row crops will be further characterized by crop type, including soy, maize and sugar cane.