Abstract
Ecosystem Services are a bundle of natural processes and functions that are
essential for human well-being, subsistence, and livelihood. The expansion of
cultivation and cropland, which is the backbone of the Indian economy, is one
of the main drivers of rapid Land Use Land Cover changes in India. To assess
the impact of the Green Revolution led agrarian expansion on the total
ecosystem service values, we first estimated the ESVs from 1985 to 2005 for
eight ecoregions in India using several value transfer approaches. Five
explanatory factors such as Total Crop Area, Crop Production, Crop Yield, Net
Irrigated Area, and Cropping Intensity representing the cropping scenarios in
the country were used in constructing local Geographical Weighted Regression
model to explore the cumulative and individual effects on ESVs. A Multi-Layer
Perceptron based Artificial Neural Network algorithm was employed to estimate
the normalized importance of these explanatory factors. During the observation
periods, cropland, forestland, and water bodies have contributed the most and
form a significant proportion of ESVs, followed by grassland, mangrove,
wetland, and urban builtup. In all three years, among the nine ESs, the highest
ESV accounts for water regulation, followed by soil formation and soilwater
retention, biodiversity maintenance, waste treatment, climate regulation, and
gas regulation. Among the five explanatory factors, TCA, NIA, CP showed a
strong positive association with ESVs, while the CI exhibited a negative
association. The study reveals a strong association between GR led agricultural
expansion and ESVs in India.
Citation
ID:
282049
Ref Key:
singh2019effects