Valoración del cambio en la cobertura vegetal de la subcuenca del río El Salto, Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Abstract

Vegetation coverage provides a series of benefits for both biodiversity and human activities that take place within a hydrological basin. Despite this, historically vegetation coverage has been affected by human intervention. The objective of this project is to determine the change in the vegetation cover of the El Salto River sub-basin, Guanacaste, Costa Rica, for the 1991-2021 period. It was observed that changes in coverage throughout the mentioned period had an improving trend, 49.77% of unhealthy vegetation with values of 0.2 and 0.3 in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, which changed for 2021 raising to 0.9. The improvement in the vegetation coverage is mainly associated with institutional efforts, since in the year 1997 a new forestry law came into effect and the program of payments for environmental services began to be implemented.