Abstract

One of the impacts triggered by climate change is the alteration of soil composition. Fluctuations in temperatures, whether rising or falling, can influence the landscape in a way that results in changes to the type and quantity of vegetation. This, in turn, can lead to vegetation loss and eventual desertification of the environment. In this study, we examine the changes undergone in soil coverage in 11 control zones corresponding to Natural Protected Areas in northern Mexico to analyze landscape desertification over the past 30 years. To conduct this analysis, we employed the libraries of Google Earth Engine due to their easy access to cloud data and computational capabilities. The Trends-Earth library was used to measure changes in soil type. Additionally, in-situ data from meteorological stations were incorporated to identify changes in the historical trend in accumulated precipitation over time. Results reveal transitions in soil type, indicating shifts from higher to lower vegetation coverage in some of the analyzed areas and also a trend of cumulative precipitation loss over the same period of time.