Proceedings of the Workshop - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Table 3. Surface for the native forest sub-use for each studied year (ha, %) by
structure and types of canopy closure.
Surface
Surface
Structure of Canopy Surface
(%) (ha) (%) change
Forest cover (%) (ha) 1993
2007
(ha)
(%)
Very dense 172672.1 17.7 167724.5 17.9 -4947.6 -2.9
Mature Forest Dense 87831.4 9.0 84788.2 9.0 -3043.2 -3.5
Open 25788.5 2.6 25427.4 2.7 -361.1 -1.4
Total 286292.0 29.3 277940.1 29.6 -8351.9 -2.9
Very dense 205889.1 21.1 194736.8 20.8 -11152.3 -5.4
Secondgrowth
Forest
Dense 227837.5 23.3 216541.9 23.1 -11295.6 -5.0
Open 66999.3 6.9 64212.1 6.9 -2310.4 -3.4
Total 500725.9 51.3 475490.8 50.7 -24758.3 -4.9
Mature/Secon Very dense 52442.6 5.4 49273.6 5.3 -3169.0 -6.0
d-growth Dense 37174.4 3.8 35649.9 3.8 -1524.5 -4.1
Forest Open 12194.1 1.2 11719.5 1.3 -474.6 -3.9
Total 101811.1 10.4 96643.0 10.3 -5168.1 -5.1
Very dense 41011.8 4.2 40379.3 4.3 -632.5 -1.5
Krummholz Dense 34875.1 3.6 34610.7 3.7 -264.4 -0.8
Open 12423.7 1.2 12248.4 1.3 -175.3 -1.4
Total Structure 88310.6 9.0 87238.4 9.3 -1072.2 -1.2
Total 977139.6 100 937312.3 100.0 -39827.3 -4.1
3.2.1. Direction and Causes of Change
Table 4 provides necessary information to analyze in detail the dynamics of land-use
change, quantifying from and to where the various sub-uses of the forest land-use
category over time have been redistributed. The main loss of native forest is due to the
surface transfer to plantations and shrublands-grasslands with 29636.1 and 16451.1
respectively. The type of native forest structures that possess the biggest transfer to
plantations is the second-growth forests with about 25000 ha.
The analysis of the causes of change shows that the clearance for forestry
plantation (28.2%) changed from agriculture farming to forestry plantation (25.3%) and
harvesting of grown plantation (20.7%) which are the main causes of land-use change
in the region of Araucanía, all of which are linked to the forestry production of exotic
species (Table 5). It is important to be noted that the loss cause of Native Forest that is
unidentified reached 6.2%
Table 6 demonstrates an evolution of the change movements (gains-losses) for
the native forest surface area through the studied period. The total surface area gain
for this usage is 8256.9 ha, with a loss of 48084 ha, giving a total balance for native
forest of 985396.5 ha. It is possible to identify that the main gain in surface area comes
from the usage of shrublands and grasslands, and the main loss is due to the
plantations sub-use and the usage of shrublands and grasslands.
‐ 24 -