Predicting ecosystem services values using land use land cover and climate change scenarios in Maze National Park and its surroundings, Ethiopia

Abstract

Land-use and land-cover and climate change are significant environmental factors affecting ecosystems and the services they provide. Their impacts are evident, and continued changes are expected to significantly affect future ecosystem services. Therefore, this study predicts the values of ecosystem services under land-use and land-cover and climate change scenarios in Maze National Park and its environs, Ethiopia. The 1985, 1995, and 2020 land-use and land-cover maps used for predictions were obtained from our previous studies, while projected temperature and precipitation data were obtained from the WorldClim database. A multilayer perceptron neural network was used to predict land-use and land-cover changes under business-as-usual and governance scenarios for 2050. Climate change predictions were based on General Circulation Models under Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 2-4.5 and 5-8.5. The Spearman correlation was employed to analyze the impacts of predicted climate change on ecosystem services. The results indicate that under the business-as-usual scenario, food production is projected to rise slightly (+ 2.3%), whereas water supply (-7.61%), raw materials (-6.72%), and climate regulation (-5.57%) services are expected to decline. In contrast, the governance scenario forecasts substantial gains in food production (+ 10.94%), water supply (+ 22.26%), raw materials (+ 19.93%), and climate regulation (+ 17.07%) services in 2050. Compared to historical data, both climate scenarios predict higher minimum and maximum temperatures and lower rainfall in the future. The predicted increases in temperature, along with declines in rainfall under both emission scenarios, are expected to negatively affect the provision of key ecosystem services. This highlights the critical need to integrate future climate and land-use and land-cover change predictions into regional planning and development policies.