Impacts and Feedbacks of Land Use and Land Cover Patterns in Landscape on Ecosystem Processes and Microclimate: Case of a Cacao-Based Agroforestry System

GIS-based Characterization of Land Use, Land Cover Patterns and Microclimate of Agricultural and Agroforestry Landscapes in a Rainforest Zone of Nigeria

“…Agroforestry is recognized as a land use option in which trees provide both product and environmental services [19]. It is well known that smallholder farmers in Sub-Sahara Africa raise and manage a mix of exotic and indigenous trees in different ways to provide a variety of ecosystem services and improve their field produce [20,21]. Research has shown that land uses that incorporate forest such as agroforestry and forest-grass fallowing have great potentials for carbon sequestration [22].…”

“…Analysis of vegetation and detection of changes in vegetation patterns are very important for natural resources management and monitoring [31]. Agricultural practices are known to have environmental effects that affect a wide range of land use and land use cover scenarios [21], Literature reports that ecosystem processes of carbon, water balance and energy fluxes in landscapes are affected by land use, land cover, and vegetation dynamics. Such effects have been attributed to the feedback of landscape processes on the climate.…”

Perspective Chapter: Microclimate, Plant Stress and Extension of Cacao Frontiers to Marginal Agroecologies of the Rainforest Tropics

“…Shade is known to buffer the effects of stress factors (high irradiance, temperatures and atmospheric deficits (low humidity) of the dry season on tropical perennial fruit tree species in plantations and lower incidence of shoot/branch die-back and tree mortality [11].…”

“…These services exert feedback on terrestrial climate. Reports indicate that the high potentials of net gains in C sequestration from cacao-based agroforestry system is a promising CO 2 mitigation strategy [11].…”