Monitoring the impact of current Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) management practices on future Ecosystem Services (ESs) provisioning has been emphasized because of the effect of such practices on ecological sustainability. We sought to model and predict the impacts of future LULC changes on subsequent changes in Ecosystem Service Value (ESV) in fragile environments undergoing complex LULC changes, Su-Xi-Chang region. After mapping and classifying the LULC for the years 1990, 2000, and 2010 using GIS and remote sensing, a Cellular Automata (CA)-Markov model was employed to model future LULC changes for the year 2020. ESV was predicted using the projected LULC data and the modified ES coefficients adopted by Xie et al. (2003). The projected results of the changes in LULC reveal that construction land expanded extensively, mainly at the expense of farmland, wetland, and water bodies. The predicted results of the ESVs indicate that water bodies and farmland are the dominant LULC categories, accounting for 90% of the total ESV. Over the study period, ESVs were diminished by 7.3915 billion CNY, mostly because of the decrease in farmland, water bodies, and wetland. A reasonable land use plan should be developed with an emphasis on controlling construction land encroachment on farmland, wetlands, and water bodies. The rules of ecological protection should be followed in LULC management to preserve ecological resources.Sustainability 2017, 9, 1204 2 of 17 genetic resources and nutrient cycling [7][8][9], erosion control and climate regulation [10], and water availability and soil fertility [11]. The consequences of these changes result in the degradation of ESs, which is the aggregate of ecosystem goods (such as food) and services (such as waste assimilation), that represent the benefits human populations derive, directly or indirectly, from ecosystem functions [12]. These impacts make the quantification of Ecosystem Service Values (ESVs) essential to raise awareness [13], develop decision making for the distribution of scarce resources among conflicting demands [14], incorporate ESs into the socioeconomic and marketing systems [15], formulate policy [16] and stimulate the conservation of ecosystems that deliver the most valuable services in support of human well-being [17].Following the pioneering works of Costanza et al. [18], who estimated global ESVs by suggesting a list of ESV coefficients for different biomes, the evaluation of ESVs and their changes has received broad attention [15,16,19]. Since then, to support mitigations of local degradation and global change problems, the interest in the valuation of ESs has grown rapidly in research and policy making communities. In particular, the dynamics of ESVs in response to changes in LULC have been widely considered in various academic fields [20][21][22][23]. For instance, in northwest China [12], LULC changes driven mainly by the expansion of oasis agriculture, significantly impact ESVs and the functions of the Yanqi basin, by causing land degradation and changes in aquat...

Characterized by high population density on a rugged topography, the Gedeo-Abaya landscape dominantly contains a multi-strata traditional agroforests showing the insight of Gedeo farmers on natural resource management practices. Currently, this area has been losing its resilience and is becoming unable to sustain its inhabitants. Based on both RS-derived and GIS-computed land-use/cover changes (LUCC) as well as socioeconomic validations, this article explored the LUCC and agroecological-based driver patterns in Gedeo-Abaya landscape from 1986 to 2015. A combination of geo-spatial technology and cross-sectional survey design were employed to detect the drivers behind these changes. The article discussed that LUCC and the prevalence of drivers are highly diverse and vary throughout agroecological zones. Except for the population, most downstream top drivers are perceived as insignificant in the upstream region and vice versa. In the downstream, land-use/cover (LUC) classes are more dynamic, diverse, and challenged by nearly all anticipated drivers than are upstream ones. Agroforestry LUC has been increasing (by 25% of its initial cover) and is becoming the predominant cover type, although socioeconomic analysis and related findings show its rapid LUC modification. A rapid reduction of woodland/shrubland (63%) occurred in the downstream, while wetland/marshy land increased threefold (158%), from 1986 to 2015 with annual change rates of - 3.7 and + 6%, respectively. Land degradation induced by changes in land use is a serious problem in Africa, especially in the densely populated sub-Saharan regions such as Ethiopia (FAO 2015). Throughout the landscape, LUCC is prominently affecting land-use system of the study landscape due to population pressure in the upstream region and drought/rainfall variability, agribusiness investment, and charcoaling in the downstream that necessitate urgent action.

The analysis of land use/land cover (LULC) change has always been a topic of interest in land dynamics research. The majority of previous studies used the conventional method of "net change" analysis to show spatiotemporal LULC transitions. However, such analysis failed to indicate whether the transition is clearly systematic or due to an apparently random process. Hence, this study aimed to identify the most prominent signals of landscape transitions over the last three decades, using the landscapes of East African Rift Valley Region. We used Remote Sensing and GIS to quantify and map the changes in LULC for 1986 and 2016, and then the two maps compared to produce transition matrices. Results show that net change and swap change accounted for 43% and 57% of total change on the landscape respectively. Accordingly, 6% of scattered acacia woodland and 5% of bush land have been converted to agricultural land, whereas 7% and 3% of scattered acacia woodland have been degraded towards grazing land and bush land respectively. These changes were found to be clearly systematic and hence indicate the dominant and prominent signals of landscape transformation. Hence, future land use policies need to consider such prominent signals of LULC change in order to plan an integrated approach to safeguard the fragile ecosystems of the region, while searching for alternative livelihood options.