RECONSTRUCTING LAND-USE DRIVERS AND THEIR SPATIAL SCALE DEPENDENCE FOR COSTA-RICA (1973 AND 1984)

Costa Rican land use and cover (in 1973 and 1984) were investigated us ing a nested scale analysis. Spatial distributions of potential biophy sical and human land use/cover drivers were statistically related to t he distribution of pastures, arable lands, permanent crops, natural an d secondary, vegetation, for 0.1 degrees grid units and five artificia lly aggregated spatial scales. Multiple regression models describing l and use/cover variability have changing model fits and varying contrib ution of biophysical and human factors, indicating a considerable scal e dependence of the land use/cover patterns. The observation that for both years each land use/cover type has its own specific scale depende ncies suggests a rather stable scale-dependent system. In Costa Rica t wo land use/cover trends between 1973 and 1984 can be discerned: (a) i ntensification in the urbanized Central Valley and its surroundings, w here agriculture is extended to steeper and less favourable soils due to a high population density, and (b) land use expansion in remoter ar eas, where the extension of arable land and pastures increased at the cost of natural vegetation. This deforestation was not driven by land shortage. The scale analysis of the Costa Rica land use/cover confirms that land use/cover heterogeneity is, like ecosystem and landscape he terogeneity, a multiscale characteristic which can best be described a s a nested hierarchial system. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd .