PS 17-163 - Assimilating the tradeoffs and synergic interactions among 17 ecosystem services in Africa

Background/Question/Methods

Appropriate management of multiple ecosystem services (ESS) in a balanced manner is an essential and demanding duty. Nevertheless, we have relatively little understanding of the spatial interactions among ESS, specifically in most African countries due to infrastructural limitations. Using 49 African countries and African continent as case studies, we examined the spatial trade-offs and synergies among 8 land use and land cover (LUC) types, and 17 ESS. In addition, we explored the implication of our findings on national, continental, and global level. To achieve this, we mapped the continental-level distributions for each of the 17 ESS (food production, raw materials, gas regulation, climate regulation, disturbance regulation, water regulation, water supply, waste treatment, erosion control, soil formation, nutrient cycling, pollination, biological control, habitat, genetic resources, recreation, and culture) using classified land cover data of MODIS remotely sensed data, with a spectral band between 0.405 and 14.385μm and a spatial resolution of 500 m. Finally, instead of using Kolmogorov-Smirnov test which indicated that not all ecosystem service data becomes subject to a normal distribution, we used Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients to determine the interactions among these ESS.

Results/Conclusions

Moderate level of interactions was discovered among most ESS across 49 countries. Most regulating services and supporting services revealed trade-offs with ESS of the other categories, whereas most provisioning services showed synergies with other ESS. In Africa, regulating services showed positive values in gas regulation (0.66), climate regulation (0.71), pollination (0.68), biological control (0.65), erosion control (0.58), disturbance regulation (0.14), water regulation (0.53), and waste treatment (0.06). Food provisioning services revealed increased values indicating that there is a synergy among these ESS for years.



The continent generally showed positive values in all ESS. The regulating services indicated that there is a positive contribution to the LUC. There is a proper regulation in place to help develop the ecosystem and the economy of the continent, evident in the African Union’s sustainable development goals (SDG), prioritized in Africa 2063Agenda Goals, and the United Nation’s strategies on SDG. The result of the proper regulation gave rise to a positive increase in the provisioning services. Forest, shrub land, and water bodies indicated synergy to the cultural services and contribute to the development of tourism in Africa. It also indicated that the synergy among the supporting service can be attributed to the dense tropical forest.