Abstract
We investigated the spatial relations of ecological and social processes to point at how state policies, population density, migration dynamics, topography, and socio-economic values of ‘forest coffee’ together shaped forest cover changes since 1958 in southwest Ethiopia. We used data from aerial photos, Landsat images, digital elevation models, participatory field mapping, interviews, and population censuses. We analyzed population, land cover, and topographic roughness (slope) data at the ‘sub-district’ level, based on a classification of the 30 lowest administrative units of one district into the coffee forest area (n = 17), and highland forest area (n = 13). For state forest sites (n = 6) of the district, we evaluated land cover and slope data. Forest cover declined by 25% between 1973 and 2010, but the changes varied spatially and temporally. Losses of forest cover were significantly higher in highland areas (74%) as compared to coffee areas (14%) and state forest sites (2%), and lower in areas with steeper slopes both in coffee and highland areas. Both in coffee and highland areas, forest cover also declined during 1958–1973. People moved to and converted forests in relatively low population density areas. Altitudinal migration from coffee areas to highland areas contributed to deforestation displacement due to forest maintenance for shade coffee production in coffee areas and forest conversions for annual crop production in highland areas. The most rapid loss of forest cover occurred during 1973–1985, followed by 2001–2010, which overlapped with the implementations of major land and forest policies that created conditions for more deforestation. Our findings highlight how crop ecology and migration have shaped spatial variations of forest cover change across different altitudinal zones whilst development, land, and forest policies and programs have driven the temporal variations of deforestation. Understanding the mechanisms of deforestation and forest maintenance simultaneously and their linkages is necessary for better biodiversity conservation and forest landscape management.
Highlights
Tropical forests shelter a substantial part of the world’s biodiversity [1,2] and play a vital role in regulating global climate processes by storing carbon [3,4]
The forest cover in highland area kebeles shrank from 70.2% in 1973 to 18.1%, which amounts to a loss of 74.2% of the 1973 forest in 2010 while that in coffee area kebeles declined from 72.6% to 62.1%, i.e., a loss of 14.4% of the 1973 forest
We found that many farmers who were maintaining forest for shade coffee and honey production in coffee areas were involved in internal migration and forest conversions in highland areas
Summary
Tropical forests shelter a substantial part of the world’s biodiversity [1,2] and play a vital role in regulating global climate processes by storing carbon [3,4]. Causes and drivers in a particular geographical setting, as well as land change in general, can in most cases only be understood through analysis of a complexity of driving forces involving situation-specific interactions among a large number of factors at different spatial and temporal scales [17,18,19]. This implies that forces of conservation and forest maintenance are important to account for to fully comprehend forest dynamics and transitions (cf [20]). Understanding temporally and spatially specific causes and driving forces, which relate both to forces of deforestation and conservation, is critical for devising policy interventions [17] and advancing understanding of land change at larger spatial scales [21]
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