Land Use Land/Cover Change Reduces Woody Plant Diversity and Carbon Stocks in a Lowland Coastal Forest Ecosystem, Tanzania

Lucas Theodori Ntukey, Linus Kasian Munishi and Anna Christina Treydte
Additional contact information
Lucas Theodori Ntukey: Department of Sustainable Agriculture, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management, School of Life Sciences and Bio-Engineering (LiSBE), The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST), Arusha P.O. Box 447, Tanzania
Linus Kasian Munishi: Department of Sustainable Agriculture, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management, School of Life Sciences and Bio-Engineering (LiSBE), The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST), Arusha P.O. Box 447, Tanzania
Anna Christina Treydte: Department of Sustainable Agriculture, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management, School of Life Sciences and Bio-Engineering (LiSBE), The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST), Arusha P.O. Box 447, Tanzania

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 14, 1-19

Abstract: The East-African lowland coastal forest (LCF) is one of Africa’s centres of species endemism, representing an important biodiversity hotspot. However, deforestation and forest degradation due to the high demand for fuelwood has reduced forest cover and diversity, with unknown consequences for associated terrestrial carbon stocks in this LCF system. Our study assessed spatio-temporal land use and land cover changes (LULC) in 1998, 2008, 2018 in the LCF ecosystem, Tanzania. In addition, we conducted a forest inventory survey and calculated associated carbon storage for this LCF ecosystem. Using methods of land use change evaluation plug-in in QGIS based on historical land use data, we modelled carbon stock trends post-2018 in associated LULC for the future 30 years. We found that agriculture and grassland combined increased substantially by 21.5% between the year 1998 and 2018 while forest cover declined by 29%. Furthermore, forest above-ground live biomass carbon (AGC) was 2.4 times higher in forest than in the bushland, 5.8 times in the agriculture with scattered settlement and 14.8 times higher than in the grassland. The estimated average soil organic carbon (SOC) was 76.03 ± 6.26 t/ha across the entire study area. Our study helps to identify land use impacts on ecosystem services, supporting decision-makers in future land-use planning.

Keywords: remote sensing and GIS; IVI; soil organic carbon; Wami Mbiki-Saadani ecosystem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/14/8551/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/14/8551/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:14:p:8551-:d:861431

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().