Decadal-scale spatiotemporal changes in land use/land cover of El Potosi Basin at semi-arid northeast Mexico and evolution of peat fire between 1980-2020 CE

Abstract We estimated decadal-scale changes to the land use/land cover in one of the many drought-prone agricultural basins (El Potosi Basin) of northeast Mexico by using the temporal satellite images of Landsat Multi spectral scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) for 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2020 CE. Increase in land without shrub and permanent uncultivated (fallow) land, and reduction in coverages of the agricultural land and forest over the last four decades reflected the intensities of water scarcity caused from global warming as well as the agriculture related anthropogenic activities. Enhanced aridity led to 136-fold surge (ca. 2.5–340 km2) in abandonment of cultivated areas covering almost half of the basin. Absence of cropland in 2010 CE reflected the severe drought of early 21st Century but augmentation in usages of groundwater reestablished the agriculture a decade later in ca.15.7 km2. Over the last four decades, the subsurface fire from combustion of peat covered ca.17.4 km2 mostly at expenses of lands with and without shrub and agriculture land. Our temporal and spatial land use/land cover assessments might be helpful for private and government agencies to evaluate the short-term impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activities in order to mitigate their effects in this water scarce region.