Geomatics to Analyse Land Transformation in Mozambique – The Nacala Corridor Case Study

Land transformation is one of the phenomena that have largely interested several areas of the World and in particular the African continent. Furthermore, during last years, due to several causes, in some of the poorest countries, like Mozambique, a very great extent of land has been acquired by private companies or by a foreign country, generally for extensive agricultural purposes. In the majority of cases, the transition from a multivariate subsistence farming and slight pastoralism (made of small land parcels, exploited for cropping to satisfy local needs) to extremely large monoculture systems causes a heavy land use transformation. Moreover, the climate change effects, which have inexorably affected the African continent since various decades, constitute a further cause in vegetation changing. All these conditions make the Mozambican territory one of the most potentially subjected to the land transformation. Using GIS methodologies and Remote Sensing (RS) data, territorial dynamics were identified, in order to investigate possible situations of land cover changes. This paper describes the approach, based on Geomatics (GIS and RS), for monitoring the above-mentioned phenomena at suitable spatial and temporal scales and for identifying areas with potential vulnerabilities.