Center for Development Research (ZEF), Department of Ecology and Natural Resources Management, University of Bonn, Walter-Flex Strasse 3, 53113, Bonn, Germany; Geographisches Institut der Universitaet Bonn, Postfach 1147, D-53001, Bonn, Germany; Institute for Geosciences and Geography, Department Sustainable Landscape Development, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Von-Seckendorff-Platz 4, 06120, Halle, Germany.
GICON Großmann Ingenieur Consult GmbH, Tiergartenstraße 48, 01219, Dresden, Germany.
J Environ Manage. 2018 Mar 1;209:393-408. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2017.12.027.
The Sudanian savanna landscapes of West Africa are amongst the world's most vulnerable areas to climate change impacts. Inappropriate land use and agriculture management practices continuously impede the capacity of agricultural landscapes to provide ecosystem services (ES). Given the absence of practical assessment techniques to evaluate the landscape's capacity to provide regulating ES in this region, the goal of this paper is to propose an integrative assessment framework which combines remote sensing, geographic information systems, expert weighting and landscape metrics-based assessment. We utilized Analytical Hierarchical Process and Likert scale for the expert weighting of landscape capacity. In total, 56 experts from several land use and landscape management related departments participated in the assessment. Further, we adapted the hemeroby concept to define areas of naturalness while landscape metrics including Patch Density, Shannon's Diversity, and Shape Index were utilized for structural assessment. Lastly, we tested the reliability of expert weighting using certainty measurement rated by experts themselves. Our study focused on four regulating ES including flood control, pest and disease control, climate control, and wind erosion control. Our assessment framework was tested on four selected sites in the Vea catchment area of Ghana. The outcome of our study revealed that highly heterogeneous landscapes have a higher capacity to provide pest and disease control, while less heterogeneous landscapes have a higher potential to provide climate control. Further, we could show that the potential capacities to provide ecosystem services are underestimated by 15% if landscape structural aspects assessed through landscape metrics are not considered. We conclude that the combination of adapted land use and an optimized land use pattern could contribute considerably to lower climate change impacts in West African agricultural landscapes.
西非的苏丹稀树草原景观是世界上最容易受到气候变化影响的地区之一。不当的土地利用和农业管理实践不断阻碍农业景观提供生态系统服务（ES）的能力。由于该地区缺乏实用的评估技术来评估景观提供调节 ES 的能力，因此本文的目的是提出一个综合评估框架，该框架结合了遥感、地理信息系统、专家权重和基于景观指标的评估。我们利用层次分析法和李克特量表对景观能力进行专家权重评估。共有来自多个土地利用和景观管理相关部门的 56 名专家参与了评估。此外，我们采用了生物区系概念来定义自然区域，同时利用斑块密度、香农多样性和形状指数等景观指标进行结构评估。最后，我们通过专家自身评定的置信度测量来测试专家权重的可靠性。我们的研究集中在包括洪水控制、病虫害控制、气候控制和防风蚀控制在内的四项调节 ES。我们的评估框架在加纳 Vea 流域的四个选定地点进行了测试。研究结果表明，高度异质的景观具有更高的病虫害控制能力，而异质程度较低的景观具有更高的气候控制潜力。此外，我们还可以表明，如果不考虑通过景观指标评估的景观结构方面，生态系统服务的潜在能力将被低估 15%。我们的结论是，采用适应性土地利用和优化土地利用模式的组合可以大大减少西非农业景观的气候变化影响。
