Changes in Ecosystem Service Values in Response to Changes in Landscape Composition in the Central Highlands of Ethiopia

Abstract

Land use/land cover (LU/LC) changes are pervasive having impacts on the total ecosystem service valuation (ESV) at the landscape as the conversion of near natural environments bring about drastic changes in certain ecosystem services. In this study, we first analyzed LU/LC changes over four decades by the use of GIS. LU/LC values were used along with global data sets developed for biomes to estimate the amount of total and individual ESV change for the study landscape and period. Sensitivity analysis was used to test the reliability of our estimation for the use of proxies. We found that, natural forests reduced by 40.21% whereas cultivated land increased by 32.42%. Other land use changes ranged within these two extremes. The increase in shrub land (9.44%), bare land (8.32%) and settlement (3.49%) were also enormous. We found a decrease in grass land (7.11%) and wetland (6.74%) followed by natural forest. Due to the change in land uses at the landscape scale, a total of $ 43.7 million/ha/yr ESV declined in the period 1973–2017. In terms of individual ecosystem services, the regulating services were substantially reduced, with climate regulation (3.15%) and water regulation (1.79%) contributing the highest value, while food production (3.03%) and soil formation (0.77%) increased. Sensitivity analysis of the use of proxies revealed that our estimation is robust and inelastic to the estimation technique used. The decrease in total and individual ESV in the study area and period calls for urgent action to be made to enhance the sustainability of ecosystem service provision at the landscape level with appropriate land management practices.