TITLE:
Quantitative Review of Ecosystem Services and Disservices Studies in the Tropics
AUTHORS:
Evariste Rutebuka, Abel Olajide Olorunnisola, Olalekan John Taiwo, Francis Mwaru, Ernest Frimpong Asamoah, Emmanuel Rukundo
KEYWORDS:
Ecosystem Services, Disservices, Tropics, Country-Basis, Choice Dependence
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Ecology,
Vol.9 No.4,
April
29,
2019
ABSTRACT: The tropics host about 80% of the
planet’s terrestrial species and over 95% of its corals. A well-known tropical
forest ecosystem to provide significant global regulating services has declined
at a rate of 5.5 M ha per year from 1990-2015, while another region noted an
increase per year. There is evidence that tropical region ecosystem services
and disservices are the least studied in the world. This study quantified
peer-review papers in the tropics, then explored the neglected ecosystem type,
service category, assessment mode, applied techniques and choice dependence
between ecosystem type, service category, assessment mode and applied
techniques. The Google Scholar and Web of Science database were used to collect
all ES & ED studies available online from 1960 to December 2017. This review
covered 102 countries with 578 articles. The study showed dramatic articles
increase in the last three years as more than 50% of articles were published
after the year of 2014. The top countries in high articles were Mexico (n = 53), India (n = 43), and Brazil (n = 35). The ES & ED assessment tools/techniques are barely applied in tropics as only social
based techniques such as interviews and questionnaire take over 45%, while
biophysical tools like remote sensing and GIS appeared only in 20%, InVEST only
in 3% while the rest tools are less than 1% even none such as ARIES model.
Urban and marine ecosystem types, disservices category and trade-off assessment
mode were the least studied. The review concluded that policy analysis ES & ED studies do not reflect the trade-offs and synergy analysis between
different services which hinder the development of pragmatic policy and
decisions toward ES sustainable management in the tropics. The rampant
urbanization in the tropics is subjected to destroy existing ES. Thus, this
review highly suggested a high concern of urbanization ecosystem. This study
also calls for great academic research to give attention to the tropical
rainforest region as most African countries to host such forest have not even a
single article on ES & ED.