Multitemporal VASA approach to analyze land use changes in the Panchucal River watershed (1990-2022)

This repository contains the underlying spatial data, tabular results, and Python source code used for the spatial vector analysis of land cover changes in the Panchucal Hydrographic Unit (HU) and the Leonán montane forest, Ecuador, between 1990 and 2022.

Data: Includes original historical vector files (shapefiles) from the Ministry of Agriculture (MAG, 1990) and the Ministry of Environment (MAATE, 2022), harmonized datasets, and calculated transition matrices resulting from the VASA (Historical and Environmental Evaluation) methodology.

Code: Includes the Python source code used for data ingestion from Google Earth Engine (MapBiomas Ecuador), spatial processing implementing the VASA topological anchoring logic, calculation of area transitions applying the Puyravaud (2003) standardization formula, and visualization scripts (matplotlib/plotly) to generate the maps and Sankey diagrams presented in the associated manuscript.