Comments from the ecosystem services point of view

SIFI seminar

“Landscape approaches in practice?” Umeå 17 March 2015

Anders Malmer

Professor, Tropical forest ecology and management – soil science

Director, SLU Global

What is ecosystem services (ES)?

• Provisioning: products like food, wood, genetic resources etc.

• Regulating: trough ecological prcesses regulation of climate, water, weed, pathogenes etc.

• Supporting: natural processes that support other ecosystem services (eg. primary production and nutrient cycling.

• Cultural and non-material: spiritual, religious, aestetic, tourism

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, MA, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis.

And how does ES relate to landscapes?

• Provisioning ES relating directly to tenure, subsistence and market in traditionally manageble scales

• Regulating ES involve landscapes, regions and the planet. Local impacts can have severe effects for stakeholders far away.

• Supporting ES again mainly have more local effects and are possible to quantify on the local (plot, field etc.) scale

• Cultural ES may come in all scales and are notoriously difficult to value as they are very subjective.

Are ES providers universally good to preserve and maintain to make

everything better? For example: ”More trees in the landscape provide:” Increased biodiversity (plants and animals) More carbon to mitigate climate change Restored and/or more productive soil Groundwater management More avaliable water in soils (climate adaptation, drought resistance Additional income to farmers Resilience to farmers (additional income and reserve food) More stable local climate and more rain?? Are there universal laws as to how these co-benefits or synergies work? Or indeed, does relations vary across different landscapes involving trade-offs?

Empiric base for ES understanding From “Synergies and trade-offs amongst ecosystem services of

trees on farms and in agricultural landscapes of Sub-Saharan Africa”

Kuyah et al. in prep • 350 peer reviewed articles

reffering to 205 sites/landscapes

For regulating ES, less than 10 % of studies relate to landscape scale but reamain at field and farm scale

For example: What are the empirics of synergies or trade-offs between trees, carbon and water management?

(the basis for REDD+ and/or PES for water services)

"It doesn't matter where you are in the world, when you grow trees on croplands, you use more water... …reduce the water available for drinking and irrigation, and harm local aquatic ecosystems.” Nature News, 22 Dec 2005

”Down with trees” - Tree planting can exacerbate

drought ” The Economist, 25 Jul 2005

This most comprehensive global review on re/afforestation effects on water was heavily biased towards sub-tropical and more northern areas.

None of the 504 observations from the 26 sites used occurred within ten degrees of the Equator.

Only two occurred within twenty.

Neither of the two tropical sites were dry (<1000mm), nor wet (>2000mm)

None was on degraded land and all for forest plantations.

Shvidenko et al. 2005

8

269

350

514 Plantations

Closed forest

Open / fragmented forest

Other wooded lands

Closed vs. open forest - Africa

Million ha

Yes, Forest plantations use more water

• Old growth forests are a mix of species and old and young individuals and gaps, while the new forest plantations are monocultures of fast growing species.

• It is not only Eucalypts that use a lot of water – also indigenous poineer species in secondary forest use as much water (Fritzsche et al., 2006)

And yes, afforestation improves soil water infiltration

Conclusions form meta-analysis; Ilstedt et al., 2007

Afforestation including agroforestry 2 to 5-fold increase in

infiltration

(relevant compared to rain intensities to result in more water to groundwater)

The current paradigm: ”Trade-off model”

Evapotranspiration Groundwater recharge Carbon

Canopy cover High Low

Gro

un

dw

ater

rec

har

ge

Transpiration Surface runoff Soil evaporation Groundwater recharge Infiltration

Canopy cover High Low

Optimum tree density model (Bargués et al 2014, Ilstedt et al submitted)

There are Opportunities Everywhere The total opportunity area is 2 billion hectares (WRI)

Land restoration and/or sustainable intensification

Our flat model landscape in parkland agroforestry in Burkina Faso may be easier to understand than other more complex

landscapes

Mosaic landscape in terms of : Ecosystems, land-use, stakholders and stakeholder dependance areas, ownership, tenure, etc.

…and coming transformations of landscapes’ effects on ES is so much more than biogeophysical empirics…

1900

2000

Relevant research and systematic (multidiciplinary) apporaches and their

applications needed.

Need to rely on process understanding but also to integrate on relevant scales where ”Landscapes” often relate well with ES, village and farm dependence area etc.

Thank you for your attention! Anders.Malmer@slu.se

https://sites.google.com/site/treescarbonwater/

http://www.slu.se/slu-global/