Tipping Points in the Supply of Ecosystem Services of a Mountainous Watershed in Southeast Asia

Marc Cotter,Georg Cadisch,Folkard Asch,Sabine Baumgartner,Anna Treydte,Kevin Thellmann

doi:10.3390/su10072418

Abstract

Rubber plantations have expanded at an unprecedented rate in Southeast Asia in recent decades. This has led to a substantial decline in the supply of ecosystem services (ESS) and has reduced livelihood options and socioeconomic well-being in rural areas. We assessed the impact of two land use scenarios on the supply of ESS in a mountainous watershed in Xishuangbanna Prefecture, People’s Republic of China. We combined time-series data derived from spatially explicit ESS models (InVEST) with a sequential, data-driven algorithm (R-method) to identify potential tipping points (TPs) in the supply of ESS under two rubber plantation expansion scenarios. TPs were defined as any situation in which the state of a system is changed through positive feedback as a result of accelerating changes. The TP analysis included hydrological, agronomical, and climate-regulation ESS, as well as multiple facets of biodiversity (habitat quality for vertebrate, invertebrate, and plant species). We identified regime shifts indicating potential tipping points, which were linked to abrupt changes in rubber yields, in both scenarios at varying spatial scales. With this study, we provide an easily applicable method for regional policy making and land use planning in data-scarce environments to reduce the risk of traversing future TPs in ESS supply for rubber producing land use systems.

Highlights

Ecosystem services (ESS) are defined as the goods and benefits people obtain from ecosystems [1]
In an era of global change, decisions may have to be made without full knowledge of potential consequences while making the best possible use of what is known at the time [64]
We used this method to identify potential tipping points (TPs) in ESS for rubber expansion scenarios in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia (MMSEA), but the method can be adapted to other areas facing comparable land use change situations, such as deforestation driven by timber or palm oil production in other parts of Southeast Asia

Summary

Introduction

Ecosystem services (ESS) are defined as the goods and benefits people obtain from ecosystems [1]. The capacity of ecosystems to sustainably deliver ESS can change and is often threatened by increasing anthropogenic pressure. Socioecological systems are characterized by complex interactions between ecosystem properties and social dynamics. Their resilience is defined as the ability of the socioecological system to sustain a set of ESS under changing environmental and management conditions [7]. This ability to generate ESS may shift from desired to less desired states as a result of increasing external pressures, which often act synergistically [8]. Shifts from one system state to another may not be desirable, costly to revise, or irreversible [6,9]

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Discussion

Conclusion