Future Impact of Land Use/Land Cover Changes on Ecosystem Services in the Lower Meghna River Estuary, Bangladesh

Abstract

Assessing the effects of different land use scenarios on subsequent changes in ecosystem service has great implications for sustainable land management. Here, we designed four land use/land cover (LULC) scenarios, such as business-as-usual development (BAUD), economic development priority (EDP), ecological protection priority (EPP), and afforestation development priority (ADP), through a Cellular Automata-Markov (CA-Markov) model, and their effects on ecosystem service values (ESVs) were predicted, using historical LULC maps and ESV coefficients of the Lower Meghna River Estuary, Bangladesh. Findings revealed that agricultural and mangrove forest lands experienced the greatest decreases, while rural and urban settlement land had the greatest increases, leading to a total ESV decrease of US$105.34 million during 1988-2018. The scenario analysis indicated that ESV in 2038 would also decrease by US$41.37 million and US$16.38 million under the BAUD and EDP scenarios, respectively, while ESV will increase by US$60.61 million and US$130.95 million under the EPP and ADP scenarios, respectively. However, all the future land use scenarios will lead to 1.65%, 10.21%, 7.58%, and 6.75% gaps in total food requirements, respectively. Hence, from the perspective of maximizing ESVs and minimizing the trade-offs in food gaps, the ADP scenario could be the optimal land management policy for the studied landscape.