Understanding Land Use, Land Cover and Woodland-Based Ecosystem Services Change, Mabalane, Mozambique

Mansour Mahamane,Natasha Ribeiro,Isla Grundy,Marc J Metzger,Pedro Zorrilla-Miras,Genevieve Patenaude,Sophia Baumert,Frank Vollmer,Isilda Nhantumbo,Peter Verweij,Casey Ryan

doi:10.5539/eer.v7n1p1

Abstract

Charcoal production constitutes a key ecosystem service in Mozambique, with an estimated market value of US$400 million a year. Due to the central role the charcoal industry plays in local livelihoods, availability of suitable wood for charcoal production has decreased because of changes in land use and land cover (LULC). This paper applied a probabilistic modelling approach combining Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs), Geographic Information Systems, Remote Sensing data, field data, and expertise from different stakeholders to understand how changes in LULC affect woodland-based ecosystem services (ES) in the Mabalane landscape, southern Mozambique. Three scenarios of policy interventions were tested: Large private; Small holder and Balanced. A BBNs was used to explore the influence of these scenarios from 2014 to 2035 on the resulting LULC. This research facilitated stakeholder engagement and improved the understanding of the interaction between LULC changes and woodland-based ES. The results highlighted the importance and spatial distribution of woodland-based ES to the local communities and that availability of suitable wood for ES will decrease under the first scenario.

Highlights

Humanity benefits from the services that ecosystems provide, but human use of land impacts the services that the land can deliver
As soon as the Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) model was poputated with data and knowledge, the model was inspected for its capability to compute future land use and land cover (LULC) and its consequences on woodland-based ecosystem services (ES) supply. 2.2.3 Scenarios Using the BBNs, we quantitatively evaluated the consequences of the scenarios for land use change as well as for specific woodland-based ES
This research showed how BBNs and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used in order to create alternative LULC futures for the Mabalane landscape

Summary

Introduction

Humanity benefits from the services that ecosystems provide, but human use of land impacts the services that the land can deliver. Changes in land use and land cover (LULC) play a considerable role in influencing supply of the woodland-based ecosystem services (ES) that rural inhabitants rely on heavily (Egoh et al, 2008). Changes in the supply of woodland-based ES are difficult to predict but can be explored through scenarios that represent alternative pathways of future development (Carpenter, Bennett & Peterson, 2006). BBNs provide quantitative outputs in the form of probabilities (Marcot, Steventon, Sutherland & McCann, 2006). They are increasingly being used in environmental management, in decision support systems and to evaluate the impact of interventions (Uusitalo, 2007). Previous work in this direction has dealt mostly with BBNs structure and has included limited spatial information (Pearl, 1988; Clark et al, 2001)

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Discussion

Conclusion