Effects of Land Use Changes on the Ecosystem Service Values of Lowland Savannas in Belize
2020
Xie, Zhikun | Stuart, Neil
Accurately identifying the extents and nature of changes within savanna ecosystems is important for planning their conservation and development. In this study, we explore using Sentinel-2 multispectral imagery and an object-based classification to classify the ecosystem of Lowland savannas in Belize at both landscape level and patch level, and investigate the land use changes in this ecosystem and differences in ecosystem service values (ESVs) between 2010-2019. The overall mapping of the savanna extent has an estimated accuracy of 88% and 76% at landscape level and patch level, respectively, and for the specific sub-classes of open savanna and dense tree savanna the accuracy is estimated at 80% and 70%. Perceivable changes in land use have occurred across the country. Agriculturalization and urbanization are commonly observed, however, there are also cases of afforestation. The total area of the savanna ecosystem within the whole Belize has only decreased slightly from 1705 km2 in 2010 to 1696 km2 in 2019, representing a consequent ESV decrease from US$ 273.46 billion to US$ 272.57 billion. The small net change balances an ESV decrease caused by expansion of agricultural or urban land, with an ESV increase resulting from a growing area of tree savanna that restores some of the degraded ecosystem services. This study demonstrates that the higher spatial resolution imagery from Sentinel-2 enabled more subtle land cover changes within the savanna ecosystem to be detected more accurately, which presents a complex picture at the patch level with different areas changing in their biodiversity, carbon storage and economic value.
اظهر المزيد [+] اقل [-]الكلمات المفتاحية الخاصة بالمكنز الزراعي (أجروفوك)
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تم تزويد هذا السجل من قبل University of Edinburgh