Implications of Land Use/Land Cover Change in the Buffer Zone of a National Park in the Tropical Andes DAMION B. KINTZ KENNETH R. YOUNG* KELLEY A. CREWS-MEYER Department of Geography and the Environment University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas 78712, USA ABSTRACT/ Theimpactsoflanduseandlandcover(LULC) change in buffer zones surrounding protected ecological reserves have important implications for the management and conservation of these protected areas. This study examines the spatial and temporal patterns of LULC change along the boundary of Rio Abiseo National Park in the Northern Peruvian Andes. Landscape change within four ecologicalzoneswasevaluatedbasedontrendsexpectedto occur between 1987 and 2001. Landsat TM and ETM imag- ery were used to produce LULC classification maps for both years using a hybrid supervised/unsupervised approach. LULCchangesweremeasuredusinglandscapemetricsand from-to change maps created by post-classification change detection. Contrary to expectations, tropical upper wet montane forest increased despite being threatened by hu- man-induced fires and cattle grazing of the highland grass- lands inside the park. Within the park's buffer zone, tropical moist forest remnants were fragmented into more numerous andsmallerpatchesbetween1987and2001;thiswasinpart duetoconversionintoagriculturalland.Themethodsusedin this study provide an effective way to monitor LULC change detection and support the management of protected areas and their surrounding environments. Land use has been recognized as one of the major drivers of global change in biodiversity over the past several decades (Sala and others 2000; Hansen and others 2004). Over this same period, protected areas have expanded globally in order to conserve biological and cultural resources (Rodrı ´guez and Young 2000; Chape and others 2003; Zimmerer and others 2004). It is recognized that protected areas are effective in pro- tecting some kinds of biodiversity (Bruner and others 2001) although extinction of native species still occurs inside reserves (Woodroffe and Ginsberg 1998). In addition, land use/land cover (LULC) change sur- rounding a reserve can reduce its conservation capac- ity, and loss of biodiversity inside a protected area may be attributed to the size or isolation of the reserve (Baker 1989; 1992; Hansen and Rotella 2001; Hansen and others 2004; DeFries and others 2005). Buffer zones with limited or restricted land use have been suggested as a management strategy to reduce the influence of surrounding land-use activity on biodi- versity within the protected area (Schonewald-Cox and Bayless 1986; Schonewald-Cox 1988; Byers 2000; Lynagh and Urich 2002). Human-driven change occurs along trajectories of land use change proceeding from wildlands to a com- pletely developed or urban stage (Hansen and others 2004). These landscapes may be undergoing multiple phases of transition or reversals resulting in a mosaic of native habitat remnants, agriculture, and urban envi- ronments. These land-use changes can result in loss of biodiversity due to homogenization of vegetation types (Flather and others 1998), susceptibility to edge effects where habitat fragmentation has occurred (Laurance and others 2001; Harper and others 2005), or an in- crease in the degree of human activity such as hunting, logging, grazing, or agriculture (Brashares and others 2001). Causes of landscape change and conservation strategies to protect biodiversity will vary, but it is apparent that economic, political, and conservation forces at local, national, and global scales are drivers of land cover change (Homewood and others 2001; Jokisch and Lair 2003) and influence the designation and management of protected areas (Zimmerer and others 2004; Bonta 2005). Much attention has been paid to LULC change within the lowlands of the Amazon basin (e.g., Skole and Tucker 1993; Alves and others 1999; Evans and others 2001), while relatively little attention has been paid to the Andes, though they are recognized as globally important for biological diversity (Stotz and others 1996; Young and Leo ´n 1999; 2000; Rodrı ´guez and Young 2000). In the tropical Andes, landscapes KEY WORDS: Land use/land cover; Change detection; Protected area management; Tropical landscapes Published online May 22, 2006 *Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; email: kryoung@mail.utexas.edu Environmental Management Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 238–252 ª 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. DOI: 10.1007/s00267-005-0147-9