Spatial and temporal analysis of the vegetation cover indices in Matola city, Mozambique

Abstract

The expansion of the urban area of Matola city in Mozambique has happened according an unstructured way. For better understand that expansion along the time images from TM / Landsat 5 and OLI / Landsat 8 orbital sensor from 1997, 2007 and 2014 were utilized in order to produce temporal vegetation cover maps. From these maps it was estimated the Vegetation Cover Index (VCI) that was useful to evaluate the urban sprawl. Results indicated that the area of vegetation cover decreased to 118.74km 2 (52.62%) in 17 years and the VCI also decreased from 61.25% in 1997 to 29.02% in 2014. On the other hand, the detailed study of the VCI to different neighborhoods of Matola, showed a very uneven spatial distribution, and from this distribution, there are alarming situations in certain villages of the Administrative Post of Matola-Sede, for the year 2014, being Matola H, Matola B, Matola G, Sikwama and Liberdade with values lower than 5%, what suggests these villages as floristic deserts.