Author details

quantify the spatial pattern of ecosystem services including biodiversity, surface water yield, carbon storage, sediment retention, nitrogen retention, and phosphorous retention in the tropical African countries Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. The land use scenarios from 2000 to 2005 and 2009 were used to analyze the change in those ecosystem services. By employing this tool, it is possible to quantitatively understand the change in ecosystem services at different spatial scales and thus makes the planning of land use strategy possible. The results of Leh et al.'s work emphasize the great challenges that we face to maintain ecosystem services provided by tropical forests, while land use change processes are becoming increas-

6 Tropical Forests - The Challenges of Maintaining Ecosystem Services while Managing the Landscape

Another example of these complex trade-offs is the effect of land use change on freshwater availability when transforming tropical forests into other type of ecosystem. In theory, grasses and shrubs use less water than trees, having therefore lower evapotranspiration rates (Oliveira et al. this volume). This could lead to higher runoff and increased provision of water downstream [23]. However, clearing tropical forests also reduces infiltration rates, increasing erosion, soil evaporation, and runoff, which in turn can lead to reduction in water quality and decrease in water recharge rates (see above). The importance of trade-offs also appears when considering that ecosystem services also depend on the users: different stake holders value different services in different ways, and therefore, it is difficult to objectively determine whether a land use change is diminishing or increasing the provisioning of ecosystem services.

Tropical forests offer services of provision, regulation, and culture that are fundamental for the well-being of the societies that inhabit them, and for extension of all the Earth's inhabitants. The large extension and important biodiversity of these forests contribute to offer critical services for our society, which are being constantly modified by the management decisions that are part of the dynamics of human society. Food demand is one of the sectors that are related to flood control and climate regulation that tropical forests provide to a large section and the whole humanity, respectively. Management interventions such as forest restoration or payments for ecosystem services can help to recover or maintain ecosystem services that

Considering all the things, maintaining ecosystem services provided by tropical forests in the face of increasing land use change is a truly challenging task. Such task must start by understanding the components that make each tropical forest unique and how those components are linked and interact to create the ecological processes that maintain (and are maintained by) tropical forests. Then, understanding how human activities (economic, cultural, etc.) are dependent on such processes is the necessary step to analyze, and take decisions about, the consequences of land use change on the ecosystem services provided by tropical forests. It is

ingly more important.

It would depend on who is asked [23].

6. Final considerations

tropical forests offer.

time to address this challenge.

Shih-Chieh Chang<sup>2</sup> , Juan A. Blanco<sup>1</sup> \* and Yueh-Hsin Lo1

\*Address all correspondence to: juan.blanco@unavarra.es

1 Department of Environmental Sciences, Public University of Navarre, Navarre, Spain

2 Department of Natural Resources and Environment Studies, National Dong Hwua University, Taiwan
