Presented by Anders Malmer at the seminar Landscape Approaches in Practice organised by SIFI and SIANI in Umeå, Sweden.

1. Comments from the ecosystem
services point of view
SIFI seminar
“Landscape approaches in practice?”
Umeå 17 March 2015
Anders Malmer
Professor, Tropical forest ecology and management – soil science
Director, SLU Global

2. What is ecosystem services (ES)?
• Provisioning: products like food, wood, genetic resources
etc.
• Regulating: trough ecological prcesses regulation of
climate, water, weed, pathogenes etc.
• Supporting: natural processes that support other
ecosystem services (eg. primary production and nutrient
cycling.
• Cultural and non-material: spiritual, religious, aestetic,
tourism
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, MA, 2005.
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis.

3. And how does ES relate to landscapes?
• Provisioning ES relating directly to tenure, subsistence
and market in traditionally manageble scales
• Regulating ES involve landscapes, regions and the planet.
Local impacts can have severe effects for stakeholders far
away.
• Supporting ES again mainly have more local effects and
are possible to quantify on the local (plot, field etc.) scale
• Cultural ES may come in all scales and are notoriously
difficult to value as they are very subjective.

4. Are ES providers universally good to
preserve and maintain to make
everything better?
For example: ”More trees in the landscape provide:”
 Increased biodiversity (plants and animals)
 More carbon to mitigate climate change
 Restored and/or more productive soil
 Groundwater management
 More avaliable water in soils (climate adaptation, drought resistance
 Additional income to farmers
 Resilience to farmers (additional income and reserve food)
 More stable local climate and more rain??
Are there universal laws as to how these co-benefits or synergies work?
Or indeed, does relations vary across different landscapes involving trade-offs?

5. Empiric base for ES understanding
From “Synergies and trade-offs amongst ecosystem services of
trees on farms and in agricultural landscapes
of Sub-Saharan Africa”
Kuyah et al. in prep
• 350 peer reviewed articles
reffering to 205
sites/landscapes
 For regulating ES, less than
10 % of studies relate to
landscape scale but reamain
at field and farm scale

6. For example:
What are the empirics of synergies or trade-offs
between trees, carbon and water management?
(the basis for REDD+ and/or PES for water services)
"It doesn't matter where you are in the world, when you
grow trees on croplands, you use more water...
…reduce the water available for drinking and irrigation, and
harm local aquatic ecosystems.”
Nature News, 22 Dec 2005

7. ”Down with trees”
- Tree planting can exacerbate
drought ”
The Economist, 25 Jul 2005

8. This most comprehensive global review on
re/afforestation effects on water was heavily biased
towards sub-tropical and more northern areas.
 None of the 504 observations from the 26 sites used occurred
within ten degrees of the Equator.
 Only two occurred within twenty.
 Neither of the two tropical sites were dry (<1000mm), nor wet
(>2000mm)
 None was on degraded land and all for forest plantations.

9. Shvidenko et al. 2005
8
269
350
514
Plantations
Closed forest
Open / fragmented forest
Other wooded lands
Closed vs. open forest - Africa
Million ha

10. Yes, Forest plantations use more water
• Old growth forests are a mix of species and old and
young individuals and gaps, while the new forest
plantations are monocultures of fast growing
species.
• It is not only Eucalypts that use a lot of water – also
indigenous poineer species in secondary forest use
as much water (Fritzsche et al., 2006)

11. And yes,
afforestation improves soil water infiltration
Conclusions form meta-analysis; Ilstedt et al., 2007
Afforestation including agroforestry  2 to 5-fold increase in
infiltration
(relevant compared to rain intensities to result in more water to groundwater)

12. The current paradigm: ”Trade-off model”
EvapotranspirationGroundwater rechargeCarbon
Canopy cover HighLow

13. Groundwaterrecharge
Transpiration Surface runoff Soil evaporation Groundwater rechargeInfiltration
Canopy cover HighLow
Optimum tree density model
(Bargués et al 2014, Ilstedt et al submitted)

14. There are Opportunities Everywhere
The total opportunity area is 2 billion hectares (WRI)
Land restoration and/or sustainable intensification

15. Our flat model landscape in parkland agroforestry in Burkina
Faso may be easier to understand than other more complex
landscapes
Mosaic landscape in terms of :
Ecosystems, land-use, stakholders and stakeholder
dependance areas, ownership, tenure, etc.

16. …and coming transformations of landscapes’ effects
on ES is so much more than biogeophysical empirics…
1900
2000

17. Relevant research and systematic
(multidiciplinary) apporaches and their
applications needed.
Need to rely on process understanding but also to
integrate on relevant scales where ”Landscapes” often
relate well with ES, village and farm dependence area etc.

18. Thank you for your attention!
Anders.Malmer@slu.se
https://sites.google.com/site/treescarbonwater/
http://www.slu.se/slu-global/