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Modeling trade-offs among ecosystem services for agriculture in the “sisal belt” of Kilosa, central Tanzania

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Abstract

Context

Exploring ways to maintain a biophysically functioning environment while improving human welfare based on competing stakeholder land uses is critical for sustainable development, especially under the context of a surging “global land rush”.

Objectives

This research (1) integrates different stakeholders’ perceptions of human-environmental conditions and dynamics in the “sisal belt” of Kilosa, Tanzania, in terms of three alternative development visions or scenarios of land uses and covers, and (2) demonstrates the trade-offs and synergies among several ecosystem and economic outcomes at a landscape level.

Methods

Two spatially explicit modeling tools, Future Land Use Simulation (FLUS) and Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST), are combined to assess future land-use and -cover patterns and project changes in four ecosystem services, including provisioning commodity production, under the three stakeholder-defined scenarios for the study area up to 2030.

Results

Each scenario had higher commodity production values relative to the baseline conditions of 2018 but lower levels of ecosystem services addressed at the level of the Kilosa sisal belt landscape. Carbon and water services may generate synergistic effects provided specific mitigation and payment mechanisms are installed. The spatial distribution of the changes in these services is projected.

Conclusions

Our approach provides an empirical-based platform to inform landscape management and planning. It provides a co-designed means to address possible futures of human-environmental conditions affecting sustainability, in this case for food production, resource use, poverty alleviation, and environmental conservation.

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Notes

  1. Pairwise comparison is the process of comparing entities in pairs to determine which of each entity is preferred. We used this method to generate the probable “preference” or weight for land conversion from one specific land class to another––an essential input for running FLUS. The detailed procedures are noted in Table S6.

  2. The forest restoration in this study follows the natural vegetation succession from woody shrubland to woodland, most of which occurs around the transitional areas between the savanna and forestland.

  3. Given the tendency of more involvement in estate work since 2016 and the potential establishment of work under formal contract (FWL), the actual per household income on average generated under BAU and FWL scenarios may exceed BSL if we add the off-farm wages to aggregate household income calculation.

  4. The most widely used herbicides are 3, 5, 6-trichloro-2-pyridinyloxyacetic acid and N-phosphonomethyl-glycine (Glyphosate) applied to leaves, stems, rhizomes, and cut plants (Weber 2017).

  5. These facilities are primarily serving those adjacent smallholders who have partially rehabilitated some deserted sisal parcels in former estate land since 2005–2006, producing low-end (quality) sisal leaves sold to CSF at a much lower price.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their critiques and comments on drafts of this study. We also express our gratitude to Dr. Wei Li, who provided important study design advice and attention to the manuscript. We extend thanks to our Tanzanian colleagues and participants for facilitating our fieldwork. Special gratitude to Zabron Njiku, Rhema Kiputu, and Violeth Ephraem from the Sokoine University of Agriculture, Mwl Mjema and Ayubu Lukindo from the University of Dar es Salaam for providing language support and assistance in field data collection. Funding was provided by the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University, USA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Landscape Ecology and Sustainability Lab (LESL), Arizona State University, 800 Cady Mall, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Puyang Li

  2. Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science, Ministry of Education, East China Normal University, No. 500 Dongchuan Road, Minhang District, Shanghai, 200241, China

    Guohua Hu

  3. School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University, 975 S Myrtle Ave, Tempe, AZ, 85281, USA

    B. L. Turner II

  4. School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, 777 E. University Dr, Tempe, AZ, 85281, USA

    B. L. Turner II

  5. Center for Geospatial Sciences, University of California, Riverside 900 University Ave, Riverside, CA, 92521, USA

    Yujia Zhang

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Contributions

PL: Data curation, Investigation, Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing- Original draft preparation. GH: Methodology, Software, Visualization. BLTII: Supervision, Writing- Reviewing and Editing. YZ: Software, Validation. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Puyang Li.

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Li, P., Hu, G., Turner, B.L. et al. Modeling trade-offs among ecosystem services for agriculture in the “sisal belt” of Kilosa, central Tanzania. Landsc Ecol 38, 533–551 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-022-01584-9

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