Impacts of urban sprawl on the ecological connectivity of landscapes in the Chili River, Arequipa - Peru

Changes in land use and road construction in areas of natural landscape character, such as the riparian landscapes that form the water backbone of the city, have generated a series of ecological conflicts at different scales and overexploitation of ecosystem services. It is for that reason that this research analyzed ecological connectivity and Morphological Spatial Patterns (MSP) with the moving window method and landscape metrics to understand the impacts of urban expansion from the spatial autocorrelation using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) between the built-up area, crops and pastures. The results over the last 6 years show the increase of mostly irregularly shaped built-up areas by 6.16% over cropland and grassland. This change is significant because both the loss of vegetation cover and the form of the architecture are potential elements responsible for the fragmentation of the riparian ecosystem, weakening it and causing a lack of ecological connectivity. The most evident fragmentation occurred in the north and south of the study area due to the saturation and variety of land uses. Finally, a process of ecological rehabilitation modified over time is detected in the middle zone that avoids edge changes in the landscape. This could represent the feasibility of ecosystem rehabilitation as an alternative in the search for optimization for a management that achieves a balance between urban expansion and ecological conservation.