The MapBiomas Uruguay initiative to monitor annual land use and land cover changes from 1985 to 2023

1. Land use and land cover change has been identified as one of the most significant drivers of the Earth system. In this context, the production of accurate, detailed and long-term maps is essential.2. Here, we present Collection 2 of MapBiomas Uruguay, which provides annual land use and land cover maps for the country spanning the period from 1985 to 2023. The maps were generated using Landsat imagery (30 m) and a supervised classification approach based on the Random Forest algorithm. Eight land use and land cover classes were mapped and validated: Native woody vegetation, Forest plantations, Swampy areas / flooded vegetation, Grasslands, Sown pastures, Annual crops, Non-vegetated areas and Water bodies.3. We observed a substantial decline in natural grasslands (-21.4%), primarily replaced by annual crops (+77.4%) and forest plantations (+857%).4. Forest plantations expanded mainly in the east, northeast and central-west regions, while annual crops increased predominantly in the central-southern region. The central-northern region retains the highest proportion of natural grasslands in the country.5. The overall accuracy of the maps exceeded 80% for the analysed years.6. Implications. These maps represent an important step in mapping and tracking land use and land cover changes across Uruguay’s temperate and subtropical grasslands, offering an unprecedented combination of spatial and temporal resolution. Our platform, which provides access to annual maps and statistics, is publicly available online for consultation and download. This open-access tool serves as a valuable resource for territorial planning, land use regulation and the formulation of public policies that support the sustainability of productive systems.