1 Tropical Reforestation: Analyzing Land Cover Change in Post‐agrarian Puerto Rico 1 Mariela Soto-Berelov School of Mathematics and Geospatial Science, RMIT University, Melbourne Australia mariela.soto-berelov@rmit.edu.au Robert Edsall Geography and Earth Science; Carthage College, Kenosha, Wisconsin, United States ABSTRACT Land-use/cover change (LUCC) has been a focus of study on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico for the last decade. Researchers have grappled with forest regeneration processes and urban growth in an island setting as indirect consequences of major economic drivers shifting from agriculture to manufacture. Existing research indicates that urban growth has tended to concentrate along the coastal plains while forest regeneration predominates in the rugged portions of the island. Here, we consider the region between the coastal plains and rugged highlands – the northern karst region. Multi-date (1937 to 1997) database analysis of historical aerial photographs using techniques from air photo interpretation and geographic information systems informs our study. Our results indicate that LUCC in the karst region is characterized by both forest regeneration and urbanization, although the respective processes have been notable at different times. Forest regeneration predominated during the first 40 years of the study period, whereas urban growth marks the last 30 years. Additionally, forests largely regenerated along barren slopes, while urban areas mainly expanded in low-lying pastures formerly used for agriculture. Significantly, forest regeneration looks to have stabilized and will begin to decline as urban areas continue to expand, unless management policies are introduced. Keywords: GIS; forest regeneration; land-use and land-cover change (LUCC); Puerto Rico karst; urban growth. Mariela Soto-Berelov is a post doctoral research associate at RMIT (Department of Geospatial Sciences). She recently finished doctoral studies at Arizona State University’s Department of Geographical Sciences where she also did an M.A. Soto-Berelov also obtained a B.A. in Environmental Journalism at the University of Puerto Rico. She specializes in environmental geography, land-use change science (LUCC), paleo vegetation mapping/modeling, geographic information science, and remote sensing. Robert Edsall is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Geography and Earth Science, and Communication and Digital Media at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA. He holds a Ph.D. in geography and an M.S. in meteorology from Pennsylvania State University, and a B.A. in music from Kenyon College. He teaches and researches in geographic information science and physical geography. He has served as a director for the Cartography and Geographic Information Society, the editor for the US National Report to the International Cartographic Association, and leadership roles in the cartography specialty group of the Association of American Geographers. 1 Paper accepted after double blind review and presented at the Geospatial Science Research Symposium. To cite: Soto‐Berelov, M., Edsall R. 2011. Reforestation and Urbanization: A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Land‐Cover Changes Occurring in the Puerto Rico Karst. Proceedings of the Geospatial Sciences Research Symposium (GSR 1), RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.