Assessing ecosystem service provision in a tropical region with high forest cover: Spatial overlap and the impact of land use change in Amapa, Brazil

Ecosystem service (ES) assessments have flourished globally in recent years and are now frequently used by policymakers and environmental managers. However, data scarce regions continue to be less well studied, limiting the comprehensiveness of the approach and its potential benefits. Here we aim to assess multiple ES and their spatial relationships in a region with high tropical forest cover, the state of Amapa, in the Brazilian Amazon. We develop a simple method to measure nine ES, identify spatial associations between them, and explore the impact of land use change on the capacity of forests to provide those services. The ES analysed include biodiversity, regional climate regulation, indigenous heritage, agricultural production, and NTFP extraction. Both negative (n= 20) and positive (n= 12) spatial associations are found, with agricultural land and forests having the highest total ES provision. We also show that this varies nonlinearly with distance to forest edges. In the face of currently unavoidable data scarcities in high biodiversity tropical areas, we show that this approach can provide useful evidence for land use management decisions.