Dynamics of mangrove cover southwest of Pinar del Rio, Cuba

The mangroves in Cuba have been degraded as a result of the negative action of man and the drastic hydrometeorological events to which they are exposed. The investigation was developed in the coastal sector to the southwest of the province of Pinar del Rio between the La Coloma inlet and the Cort & eacute;s lagoon, with an extension of 82 km. The objective was to evaluate mangrove cover in different periods between 1957-2022 based on a study of spatiotemporal dynamics. Aerial photographs from the years 1957, 1971 and 1999 and satellite images from Landsat 7 ETM+ sensor from 2003 and Sentinel 2 A from 2022. The techniques used were georeferencing, atmospheric correction, band combinations, NDVI, segmentation, photointerpretation. The stability of location and residence, and the deforestation rate, were calculated. It was determined that the mangrove coverage in this area showed a tendency to increase. The location stability is 97.4 %, indicating that it has remained in the same place with a residence stability of 13.2 %, reporting an average annual increase of 0.12 % for the entire period.