La Costa de Hermosillo, even though it encompasses a highly dynamic and impacted ecosystem, is only one among many similar locations worldwide that requires careful planning and monitoring to avoid further degradation of the natural capital. Implementation of spatially explicit models and monitoring practices to analyze land-cover dynamics in deforested landscapes in arid agro-ecosystems are necessary to determine the allocation of efforts required to restore highly degraded environments to sustainability.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the support for this research provided by the Arizona Remote Sensing Center, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA. JRRL wishes to acknowledge support from CONACYT in the form of a PhD scholarship and to recognize the assistance with the field work provided by the CONAFOR-CONACYT grant (10644) to AECV. Landsat TM data were obtained through the online USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Earth Explorer website http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/NewEarthExplorer.