Abstract
Mountain areas are fragile ecosystems that play important roles in people’s livelihoods and maintenance of the global ecosystem through the provision of many ecosystem services. Land use/cover (LULC) change is considered one of the major threats to mountain areas due to its effects on ecosystem services including carbon stocks. In this study we assessed LULC change between 1987 and 2015 and its impact on aboveground carbon stocks in the Atacora Chain of Mountains (ACM) in Benin, West Africa. Supervised classification was performed to delineate LULC classes on three dates (1987, 2001 and 2015), and forest measurements carried out in the land cover classes, to estimate the aboveground biomass and the subsequent carbon stocks. Seven land cover classes were delineated: gallery forests, woodlands, savanna, water, settlements, bare lands and farm lands. LULC changes were characterized by three transitions: 1) the change of man-made land cover into savanna, 2) the change of natural vegetation into man-made land cover and 3) the degradation of gallery forests and woodland into less wooded vegetation. The aboveground carbon stock in gallery forests, woodland and tree savanna were significantly greater than in shrub savanna. During the 28 years of assessment, LULC change in gallery forests, woodland and savanna caused an estimated overall aboveground carbon release of 17.10% in the ACM. From the aboveground carbon quantity in the ACM, it appeared that this ecosystem is a potential carbon reservoir. Because the aboveground carbon stock in shrub savanna is significantly lower as compared to gallery forests, woodland and tree savanna and the rates of degradation from gallery forests and woodland to savanna are high, 53.62% and 59.99% respectively in 28 years, LULC change may undermine the ACM ability to store carbon and contribute to climate change mitigation. There is a need to investigate the drivers of this degradation for actions to preserve the natural vegetation in the ACM. Keywords: Atacora Chain of Mountains; Land use/land cover (LULC); Benin; West Africa; Carbon stock DOI: 10.7176/JEES/10-6-13 Publication date: June 30 th 2020
Highlights
Mountainous areas are increasingly at the center of global policy debates, and their importance is underlined by the fact that they host half of all 34 global biodiversity hotspots (Chape et al, 2008) and twenty percent of the world’s human population lives in mountains or at their edges (Korner and Ohsawa, 2005)
While collecting the ground truth points in the Atacora Chain of Mountains (ACM) we identified various LULC classes which were categorized as bare lands, settlements, farm lands, savanna, woodland, gallery forests and water (Table 1)
A decrease was noticed in natural vegetation area and the water body classes whilst there was an increase in man-made land cover
Summary
Mountainous areas are increasingly at the center of global policy debates, and their importance is underlined by the fact that they host half of all 34 global biodiversity hotspots (Chape et al, 2008) and twenty percent of the world’s human population lives in mountains or at their edges (Korner and Ohsawa, 2005). Mountains play an important role in influencing global and regional climates and weather conditions (FAO, 2011). One of the key functions of mountainous areas in the global ecosystem is their contribution to carbon cycle, a major concern of current global policy debates. Anthropogenic pressure associated with human settlements in and below the montane belts, land use, land transformation, and other human activities may endanger mountain biota more than climate change in many regions of the world (Korner and Ohsawa, 2006)
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