Landscape changes in avulsive river systems: Case study of Taquari River on Brazilian Pantanal wetlands

The Pantanal is an important active sedimentary basin in central South America where highly diverse flora and fauna are sustained by seasonal floods. Intense land use in the catchment areas enhanced sediment load and destabilized avulsive river systems in the plains. A well-known avulsion in the Taquari River during the 1980–90s, called “Zé da Costa”, has shifted the river mouth and drastically changed the nearby landscapes, making them difficult to map because of the hard access and the large variations in spectral and spatial attributes of raster data like Landsat images. Therefore, we developed a useful method to map and explore landscape changes in “Zé da Costa” avulsion that combines geotagged field pictures, randomly selected high-resolution orbital truths, normalized difference vegetation index, digital elevation models, linear spectral mixture models and Landsat historical imagery in pixel-based and object-oriented supervised classifications. We found that bands in green, red, and near-infrared spectra provide better mapping results with object-oriented algorithms for deriving and studying temporal dry/wet ratio dynamics. The temporal analyses of the dry/wet ratio showed that avulsions in the Taquari River have the potential to change permanently the “Zé da Costa” area into a dry landscape, making it susceptible for land use (deforestation and fire), except areas seasonally inundated by the floods of the Paraguay River. Overall, our method might be also useful for long-term studies of land use and climate change in avulsive rivers in wetlands around the world. [Display omitted] •Remote sensing mapping in avulsive river areas of wetlands is challenging.•We validated a mapping method with ground, orbital truths, and ancillary data.•Landscape mapping with temporal dry/wet ratio permitted studying long-term changes.•Avulsions are enhanced by and enhance human land-use and climate changes.