Aproximación espacial para la identificación de áreas de huertos familiares en zonas rurales: el caso de Sinincay – Cuenca – Ecuador.

Mapping land use and delimiting study areas in the peripheral zones of cities has been one of the central themes of the literature on urban and territorial studies in Latin American countries with difficult access to data where transformation processes are accelerated. The objective of this study was to propose an applicable methodology for the detection of home garden areas in rural areas of Cuenca. It was based on the use of Sentinel-2 satellite images and unsupervised classification processes to identify possible cultivation areas. Based on this, spatial criteria were defined to classify and identify home gardens, based on the characteristics of the gardens themselves. A total of 699 gardens were identified in the field. Therefore, this study is a first approximation to the identification of home gardens in rural areas and constitutes very useful information for local governments, who are responsible for promoting these activities and in turn improving the production, mobilization, and marketing conditions of the vulnerable group that engages in subsistence agriculture. Thus, this research can be replicated in different localities and geographical contexts.