Ecosystem services and biodiversity trends in Mozambique as a consequence of land cover change

Niquisse, Sérgio; Cabral, Pedro; Rodrigues, A. S.; Augusto, Gabriela

doi:10.1080/21513732.2017.1349836

Cited by 43 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 71 publications

(87 reference statements)

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“…Different management alternatives are needed to incorporate scenarios in a science-policy interface for environmental assessments [25]. Thus, the use of plausible scenarios at regional scales may support sustainable development in a context of environmental changes on land systems [26][27][28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological Risk Assessment Based on Land Cover Changes: A Case of Zanzibar (Tanzania)

Omar

Cabral

2020

Remote Sensing

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Land use and land cover (LULC) under improper land management is a major challenge in sub-Saharan Africa and has drastically affected ecological security. Addressing environmental impacts related to this challenge requires efficient planning strategies based on the measured information of land use patterns. This study assessed the ecological risk index (ERI) of Zanzibar based on LULC. A random forest classifier was used to classify three Landsat images of Zanzibar for the years 2003, 2009, and 2018. Then, a land change model was employed to simulate the LULC changes for 2027 under a business-as-usual (BAU), conservation, and extreme scenarios. Results showed that the built-up areas and farmland of Zanzibar Island have increased constantly, while the natural grassland and forest cover have decreased. The forest, agricultural, and grassland were highly fragmented into several small patches. The ERI of Zanzibar Island increased at a constant rate and, if the current trend continues, this index will increase by up to 8.9% in 2027 under an extreme scenario. If a conservation scenario is adopted, the ERI will increase by 4.6% whereas if a BAU policy is followed, this value will increase by 6.2%. This study provides authorities with useful information to understand better the ecological processes and LULC dynamics and prevent unmanaged growth and haphazard development of informal housing and infrastructure.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological Risk Assessment Based on Land Cover Changes: A Case of Zanzibar (Tanzania)

Omar

Cabral

2020

Remote Sensing

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“…Land use/cover change (LUCC) is increasingly impacting on the Earth's surface biophysics, biogeochemistry, and biogeography at any rate or scale such as ecosystem services [1][2][3], water balance [4][5][6][7][8], climate [9][10][11][12][13][14], biodiversity conservation [15][16][17], and agriculture [18]. It means land use/cover information is important for natural resources planning and management [19,20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

JAXA High-Resolution Land Use/Land Cover Map for Central Vietnam in 2007 and 2017

et al. 2018

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Robust remote monitoring of land cover changes is essential for a range of studies such as climate modeling, ecosystems, and environmental protection. However, since each satellite data has its own effective features, it is difficult to obtain high accuracy land cover products derived from a single satellite’s data, perhaps because of cloud cover, suboptimal acquisition schedules, and the restriction of data accessibility. In this study, we integrated Landsat 5, 7, and 8, Sentinel-2, Advanced Land Observing Satellite Advanced Visual, and Near Infrared Radiometer type 2 (ALOS/AVNIR-2), ALOS Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) Mosaic, ALOS-2/PALSAR-2 Mosaic, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), and ancillary data, using kernel density estimation to map and analyze land use/cover change (LUCC) over Central Vietnam from 2007 to 2017. The region was classified into nine categories, i.e., water, urban, rice paddy, upland crops, grassland, orchard, forest, mangrove, and bare land by an automatic model which was trained and tested by 98,000 reference data collected from field surveys and visual interpretations. Results were the 2007 and 2017 classified maps with the same spatial resolutions of 10 m and the overall accuracies of 90.5% and 90.6%, respectively. They indicated that Central Vietnam experienced an extensive change in land cover (33 ± 18% of the total area) during the study period. Gross gains in forests (2680 km2) and water bodies (570 km2) were primarily from conversion of orchards, paddy fields, and crops. Total losses in bare land (495 km2) and paddy (485 km2) were largely to due transformation to croplands and urban & other infrastructure lands. In addition, the results demonstrated that using global land cover products for specific applications is impaired because of uncertainties and inconsistencies. These findings are essential for the development of resource management strategy and environmental studies.

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“…These provinces are vastly explored for oil, coal, hydrocarbons and minerals 46 , presenting severe challenges for biodiversity conservation. Moreover, the high population growth observed in the northern provinces is associated with agricultural development and habitat degradation 47,48 . Given that habitat loss is a leading cause of biodiversity decline, there is an urgency to study and survey the provinces identified in this study since some economic activities, such as mine-exploration and plantation forestry, without proper impact studies may lead to irreversible biodiversity loss 49,50 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Knowledge Gaps of Mozambique’s Terrestrial Mammals

Neves

Mathias

Bastos-Silveira

2019

Sci Rep

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A valuable strategy to support conservation planning is to assess knowledge gaps regarding primary species occurrence data to identify and select areas for future biodiversity surveys. Currently, increasing accessibility to these data allows a cost-effective method for boosting knowledge about a country’s biodiversity. For understudied countries where the lack of resources for conservation is more pronounced to resort to primary biodiversity data can be especially beneficial. Here, using a primary species occurrence dataset, we assessed and mapped Mozambique’s knowledge gaps regarding terrestrial mammal species by identifying areas that are geographically distant and environmentally different from well-known sites. By comparing gaps from old and recent primary species occurrence data, we identified: (i) gaps of knowledge over time, (ii) the lesser-known taxa, and (iii) areas with potential for spatiotemporal studies. Our results show that the inventory of Mozambique’s mammal fauna is near-complete in less than 5% of the territory, with broad areas of the country poorly sampled or not sampled at all. The knowledge gap areas are mostly associated with two ecoregions. The provinces lacking documentation coincide with areas over-explored for natural resources, and many such sites may never be documented. It is our understanding that by prioritising the survey of the knowledge-gap areas will likely produce new records for the country and, continuing the study of the well-known regions will guarantee their potential use for spatiotemporal studies. The implemented approach to assess the knowledge gaps from primary species occurrence data proved to be a powerful strategy to generate information that is essential to species conservation and management plan. However, we are aware that the impact of digital and openly available data depends mostly on its completeness and accuracy, and thus we encourage action from the scientific community and government authorities to support and promote data mobilisation.

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Ecosystem services and biodiversity trends in Mozambique as a consequence of land cover change

Cited by 43 publications

References 71 publications

Ecological Risk Assessment Based on Land Cover Changes: A Case of Zanzibar (Tanzania)

Ecological Risk Assessment Based on Land Cover Changes: A Case of Zanzibar (Tanzania)

JAXA High-Resolution Land Use/Land Cover Map for Central Vietnam in 2007 and 2017

Mapping Knowledge Gaps of Mozambique’s Terrestrial Mammals

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