Climate and biodiversity change constrain the flow of cultural ecosystem services to people: A case study modeling birding across Africa under future climate scenarios

Abstract

Global change is currently impacting ecosystems and their contributions to people (i.e. ecosystem services). These impacts have consequences for societies and human well-being, especially in Africa. Historically, efforts have focused on assessing global change from a social or biophysical perspective, treating them as separate entities. Yet, our understanding of impacts to social-ecological systems remains limited, particularly in the Global South, due to a lack of data, tools, and approaches accounting for social and ecological aspects of ecosystem services. This is especially relevant for cultural ecosystem services as they are less tangible. We use a simple indicator and important provider of a multitude of cultural ecosystem services, birding, to understand how climate, biodiversity, and land use change will impact cultural ecosystem services across Africa. We explore how emerging tools and data can overcome limitations in mapping and modeling cultural ecosystem services, particularly in analyzing human preferences and behavior at large spatiotemporal scales and in data-poor regions. Leveraging crowdsourced data from eBird and using machine learning techniques we map and model recreational birding to assess the underlying social-ecological relationships and the impact of future climate and environmental change. We show that bird species richness, protected areas, accessibility, and max temperature contribute most to birding suitability across the continent. Further, we show spatial shifts in the suitability of birding under three future climate scenarios (SSP126, 370, and 585). Models suggest climate and biodiversity change will increasingly constrain the flow of birding related cultural ecosystem services across Africa. This has implications for human-nature interactions, development of countries, management of protected areas, and overall human well-being in the future. More generally, we highlight opportunities for crowdsourced datasets and machine learning to integrate non-material ecosystem services in models and thus, enhance the understanding of future impacts to ecosystem services and human well-being.

Keywords: Big data; Biodiversity conservation; Birding; Ecotourism; Machine learning; Recreation; Social-ecological systems; eBird.