Shifts in farming systems on land-use land-cover and biosphere reserve management in Southwestern Ethiopia

Sustainable agricultural development and land-use systems require the elaboration and design of proper development options, and also land use changes for agro-ecosystems. This project aimed to assess shifts and development options of major farming systems, and if and how the biosphere reserve establishment and its management have changed the natural and agricultural landscape components, and/or the forest coverage of the Yayo Coffee Forest Biosphere Reserve. Focus group discussions, satellite image analysis, secondary information and personal observations were used to collect data in the four (4) kebeles (PAs) in the biosphere reserve. The result revealed that forest areas showed trends of increment as 5650.11ha, 6562.08ha and 6949.62ha in 1986, 2006 and 2016 respectively, and other green vegetation somewhat increased from 1778.76ha in 1986 to 1944.54ha in 2016. Farmlands and others decreased from 2314.35ha in 1986 to 849.24ha in 2016. Areas of natural forest decreased from 80,000 to 69,100 hectares between 2007 and 2016, while areas of plantation coffee increased from 14,720 to 34,100 hectares in the same periods. The development options such as woodlots, live fences and coffee plantations have been used to compensate services of natural forest and to address local communities’ needs. Therefore, this study concludes that the shifts and modifications in the natural landscape and ecosystem functioning to intensify certain provisioning services, for example implementation of woodlots and plantation coffee have resulted declining in agro-biodiversity and ecosystem services. Therefore, this study recommends sustainable development options and diversified farming systems need be considered in the land use changes.