Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties

Knoke, Thomas; Paul, Carola; Hildebrandt, Patrick; Calvas, Baltazar; Castro, Luz María; Härtl, Fabian; Döllerer, Martin; Hamer, Ute; Windhorst, David; Wiersma, Yolanda F.; Fernández, Giulia F. Curatola; Obermeier, Wolfgang A.; Adams, Julia; Breuer, Lutz; Mosandl, R.; Beck, Erwin; Weber, Michael T.; Stimm, Bernd; Haber, Wolfgang; Fürst, Christine; Bendix, Jörg

doi:10.1038/ncomms11877

Cited by 86 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…We provide an innovative and dynamic perspective on the relation between the conservation of natural forests and maintaining multiple ES. Our study extends the static land-use allocation model developed previously (Knoke et al, 2014(Knoke et al, , 2016. While the previous studies ignored deforestation and the landscape context and were limited to a fixed area of abandoned lands, we now consider the whole landscape composition and allow for an expansion of non-natural land in our optimizations.…”

Section: The Concept: Modelling Three Decision-making Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Accounting for multiple ecosystem services in a simulation of land‐use decisions: Does it reduce tropical deforestation?

Knoke

Paul

Rammig

et al. 2020

Global Change Biology

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Conversion of tropical forests is among the primary causes of global environmental change. The loss of their important environmental services has prompted calls to integrate ecosystem services (ES) in addition to socio‐economic objectives in decision‐making. To test the effect of accounting for both ES and socio‐economic objectives in land‐use decisions, we develop a new dynamic approach to model deforestation scenarios for tropical mountain forests. We integrate multi‐objective optimization of land allocation with an innovative approach to consider uncertainty spaces for each objective. These uncertainty spaces account for potential variability among decision‐makers, who may have different expectations about the future. When optimizing only socio‐economic objectives, the model continues the past trend in deforestation (1975–2015) in the projected land‐use allocation (2015–2070). Based on indicators for biomass production, carbon storage, climate and water regulation, and soil quality, we show that considering multiple ES in addition to the socio‐economic objectives has heterogeneous effects on land‐use allocation. It saves some natural forest if the natural forest share is below 38%, and can stop deforestation once the natural forest share drops below 10%. For landscapes with high shares of forest (38%–80% in our study), accounting for multiple ES under high uncertainty of their indicators may, however, accelerate deforestation. For such multifunctional landscapes, two main effects prevail: (a) accelerated expansion of diversified non‐natural areas to elevate the levels of the indicators and (b) increased landscape diversification to maintain multiple ES, reducing the proportion of natural forest. Only when accounting for vascular plant species richness as an explicit objective in the optimization, deforestation was consistently reduced. Aiming for multifunctional landscapes may therefore conflict with the aim of reducing deforestation, which we can quantify here for the first time. Our findings are relevant for identifying types of landscapes where this conflict may arise and to better align respective policies.

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Section: The Concept: Modelling Three Decision-making Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Accounting for multiple ecosystem services in a simulation of land‐use decisions: Does it reduce tropical deforestation?

Knoke

Paul

Rammig

et al. 2020

Global Change Biology

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“…In contrast to the numerous studies of agricultural systems, only limited numbers of largescale analyses, particularly quantitative analyses, have examined the landscape-related effects of land-sharing approaches in forest landscapes (Gustafsson et al 2012;Paul & Knoke 2015). Given the importance of the landscape perspective (Lindenmayer et al 2008), especially in the search for solutions to reconcile tradeoffs between conservation and development (Sayer et al 2013;Tscharntke et al 2015) and between multiple ecosystem services (Law et al 2015;Knoke et al 2016), further insight is required to evaluate how large-scale patterns may alter the effectiveness of conservation actions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Landscape properties affect biodiversity response to retention approaches in forestry

Mori

Tatsumi

Gustafsson

2017

Journal of Applied Ecology

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1. Retention forestry, in which trees and tree patches are set aside at harvest to promote biodiversity, has been proven to have positive effects on biodiversity at the stand-level across different taxa. However, the effectiveness of retention approaches with regard to landscape composition remains unexplored. 2. We linked the effect sizes from two meta-analyses (31 case studies and 1050 comparisons from boreal and temperate regions), which quantified the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation as a result of retention practices, with the stand property of retention level (the percentage of trees retained after logging) and with Landsat-retrieved landscape data on forest cover and spatial configurations at three spatial scales (1, 3, and 5 km radii). 3. We found that, in addition to the fundamental importance of tree retention as a local-scale implementation for conservation, landscape properties were important in models to predict biodiversity responses. The effect sizes for species richness decreased with increasing patch contiguity within the landscapes at all spatial scales. Similar results were observed for abundance responses at the largest spatial scale. These results suggest that biodiversity responses to tree retention may be weaker in less fragmented landscapes, which is in agreement with theoretical and empirical findings from agricultural landscapes ('the intermediate landscape-complexity hypothesis'). 4. The benefits of retention levels within a stand (percentage of trees retained) varied amongst species with different habitat requirements (forest-dependent, open habitat, and generalist species). Whilst this stand-level property was often an important determinant of biodiversity responses, models that included landscape properties as explanatory variables always performed better than those that were only based on the retention levels for all species groups. Thus, within-stand habitat conditions and landscape configurations likely have synergetic influences on biodiversity responses. 5. Synthesis and applications. In addition to the importance of stand-level properties, such as the action of retention harvesting itself and the number of trees retained, conditions in the surrounding landscape can simultaneously affect biodiversity in stands that are managed under retention forestry. Our study suggests that retention patches are particularly important in moderately fragmented landscapes. Retention practices could be less important in previously unlogged and less fragmented landscapes, where setting aside large reserves is a conservation priority. For highly fragmented landscapes, different actions of forest restoration, which are not limited to set-aside actions during logging, would be important. Our study emphasizes that carefully planned conservation schemes with a large-scale perspective, as well as local-scale actions, such as retention forestry, are critical for effective forest management and conservation planning.

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“…Using a dedicated and well-documented software application such as InVEST provides a basis for comparisons with future ESAs of rubber cultivation systems, as it has become the most frequently applied tool to model ESS in recent years [63]. Improvements to the design of the scenarios would be possible by utilizing land use optimization algorithms, which were shown to successfully optimize the provision of ESS [48,49], as well as an active integration of multifunction and uncertainty effects [69]. We do not claim that BTO is the best possible solution for our study area, but we want to emphasize that the close interaction with stakeholders not only confirmed the viability of our suggested management measures, but also widened their understanding of the consequences of future land use conversions they are accountable for.…”

Section: Transdisciplinarity and Ranking Of Multiple Essmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Ecosystem Services in Rubber Dominated Landscapes in South-East Asia—A Challenge for Biophysical Modeling and Transdisciplinary Valuation

Thellmann

Blagodatsky

Häuser³

et al. 2017

Forests

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Abstract:The concept of ecosystem services (ESS) has been increasingly recognized for its potential in decision making processes concerning environmental policy. Multidisciplinary projects on rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) cultivation, integrating research on a variety of ESS, have been few and far between. More than three years of iterative workshops with regional stakeholders resulted in the development of future land use scenarios for our study area in Xishuangbanna, PR China. We used the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs) modeling framework to analyze their impact on sediment retention, water yield, habitat quality, and carbon sequestration and developed a model for assessing rubber yields. We investigated the percentage deviations of integrated ESS indices in each scenario, as compared to the initial state of 2015 and as a novelty used different statistical weighting methods to include rankings for the preference of ESS from three contrasting stakeholder groups. The business-as-usual scenario (BAU, continuous rubber expansions) revealed an increase in rubber yields trading off against all other ESS analyzed. Compared to BAU, the measures introduced in the balanced-trade-offs scenario (reforestation, reduced herbicide application, riverine buffer zones, etc.) reduced the total amount of rubber yield but enhanced habitat quality and regulating ESS. The results show that the integrated indices for the provisioning of ESS would be overestimated without the inclusion of the stakeholder groups. We conclude that policy regulations, if properly assessed with spatial models and integrated stakeholder feedback, have the potential to buffer the typical trade-off between agricultural intensification and environmental protection.

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Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties

Cited by 86 publications

References 64 publications

Accounting for multiple ecosystem services in a simulation of land‐use decisions: Does it reduce tropical deforestation?

Accounting for multiple ecosystem services in a simulation of land‐use decisions: Does it reduce tropical deforestation?

Landscape properties affect biodiversity response to retention approaches in forestry

Assessing Ecosystem Services in Rubber Dominated Landscapes in South-East Asia—A Challenge for Biophysical Modeling and Transdisciplinary Valuation

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