Abstract
The balance between the supply of multiple ecosystem services (ES) and the fulfillment of society demands is a challenge, especially in the tropics where different land use transition phases emerge. These phases are characterized by either a decline (from intact old-growth to logged forests) or a recovery of ES (successional forests, plantations, and agroforestry systems). This highlights the importance of ecosystem service multifunctionality (M) assessments across these land use transition phases as a basis for forest management and conservation. We analyzed synergies and trade-offs of ES to identify potential umbrella ES. We also evaluated the impact of logging activities in the decline of ES and M, and the influence of three recovery phases in the supply of ES and M. We installed 156 inventory plots (1600 m2) in the Ecuadorian Central Amazon and the Chocó. We estimated indicators for provisioning, regulating, supporting services and biodiversity. M indicator was estimated using the multifunctional average approach. Our results show that above-ground carbon stocks can be considered as an umbrella service as it presented high synergetic relations with M and various ES. We observed that logging activities caused a decline of 16–18% on M, with high impacts for timber volume and above-ground carbon stocks, calling for more sustainable practices with stricter post-harvesting control to avoid a higher depletion of ES and M. From the recovery phases it is evident that, successional forests offer the highest level of M, evidencing high potential to recover multiple ES after human disturbance.
Highlights
Tropical forests cover 45% of the global forest area [1,2] and are characterized by an outstanding biodiversity [3]
We observed that logging activities caused a decline of 16–18% on M, with high impacts for timber volume and above-ground carbon stocks, calling for more sustainable practices with stricter post-harvesting control to avoid a higher depletion of ecosystem services (ES) and M
The first component in both regions showed a grouping pattern that exhibits the change in ES and M across different land use transition phases from old-growth forest to logged forest and to more transformed systems such as successional forests, agroforestry systems, and plantations
Summary
Tropical forests cover 45% of the global forest area [1,2] and are characterized by an outstanding biodiversity [3]. For the Amazon and Chocó lowland rainforests there is still a lack of assessments that comprehensively evaluate synergies and trade-offs on ES supply and ecosystem service multifunctionality throughout different land use transition phases. Detailed quantitative information on the interactions, decline, and recovery of ES and ecosystem service multifunctionality in ecological systems is needed to efficiently monitor and preserve the remaining forest areas while building on the sustainable use of bundles of ES [33]. We include natural forests (old-growth forest, logged forest, and successional forest), planted forest, and agroforestry systems [19,54], which altogether represent the land use transitions phases [25,26] observed in two biodiversity hotspots, the Amazon and the Chocó. For plantations, we only established six plots in the Central Amazon and nine plots in the Chocó since there were no plantations in all the sites
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