Impacts of land cover changes on the provisioning ecosystem services at Goaso-Ghana
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Date
2015-07-02
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Abstract
Natural ecosystems provide services that contribute to human well-being such as
food, medicines, fuel wood, fresh water, and climate regulation. In spite of this, most
natural ecosystems have been converted or modified into agricultural areas and other
human land use to maximize single-purpose use. Various researches reported that,
the human use of ecosystem services, particularly of provisioning services, has
accelerated in the last 50 years and that nearly 60% of the ecosystems globally are
being degraded and used unsustainably. Also, it‟s projected the demand for
ecosystem services is expected to grow in the future. As the human use of most
ecosystem services continues to increase, there is a critical need for research
involving the quantification of trade-offs among various ecosystem services.
Provisioning services include harvestable goods such as bush meat, fruits & food,
water, fuel wood & medicinal products from the natural environment. Provisioning
ecosystem services in particular is mostly acknowledged within developing countries
like those in Africa, where many rural people are poor and are reliant on these
services for their livelihoods. Though these services are crucial for human wellbeing,
their spatial locations in terms of occurrences are rarely considered in plan, policy
development and in decision making. The objective of this research is to assess the
effects of land cover conversion in the supply of ecosystem services to the local
beneficiaries due to declining of provisioning ecosystem services which impacts the
local people‟s livelihood. Ecosystem services studies currently lack information
regarding stakeholder‟s socio values. This information is vastly relevant to human
well-being, which is the motivation of ecosystem services assessments. Presented
research takes a non-economic quantitative ecosystem services approach from an
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analysis of stakeholder‟s perceptions on ecosystem services, livelihood and the
impact of land cover changes. The results are presented from an analysis of
stakeholder‟s perceptions of ecosystem services, well-being and drivers of change
from the Goaso off-forest reserve, Ghana. The methodologies used includes GIS
analysis for land cover mapping & change detection, semi structured interviews for
collecting the values given to the services and the general information concerning
their environment. While participatory mapping and valuation was for mapping
ecosystem supply areas and the values given to them, participatory mapping
activities and convened group discussions on ecosystem services was done for four
villages. Participation of local people and other stakeholders in mapping and
valuation of the ecosystem services is very essential in the identification of what are
the ecosystem and their services and their relation to land cover/use from their
perspective. The services valuation results showed that, water, fuel wood and bush
meat were highly valued services.[ Though the pattern of the values is the same in
the sense that the higher value were given for specific services and lower for specific
one across all communities] . The valuation of Land covers as a place for services
supply pointed out to annual cropland and fallow land high values as a place for
collecting multiple services. The change detection focused on two types of changes;
(1) changes in the land covers of ecosystem services supply areas whereby the results
showed the changes that occurred in all the land covers, but with the decrease in
annual cropland from 39% to 7%, fallow land from 8% to 2%and Forest & off
reserve trees from 26% to 10%. (2) Changes in the supply of ecosystem services. All
of these changes are within the period of 12 years .The outcomes showed scarcity
and reduction in the availability of some services like bush meat, medicinal products,
water and fuelwood, as a result of land cover changes.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Wildlife and Range Management,
College of Renewable Natural Resources in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the degree of MSC GEO INFORMATION SCIENCE