Integrating ecosystem services supply potential from future land-use scenarios in protected area management: A Bangladesh case study

The establishment of protected areas (PAs) is a key strategy to conserve declining forests and biodiversity worldwide. Due to poor infrastructure and a limited capacity of PA managers, most of the PAs in developing countries fail to achieve their management targets. In this paper, the potential to integrate ecosystem services (ES) into land-use planning was assessed in order to better manage PAs in tropical countries. Firstly, we mapped the relative capacity of different land-use/land cover (LULC) to supply ES in and around the Satchari National Park (SNP) located in northeast Bangladesh. Two alternative scenarios to envisage the likely future supply of ES in the area were then analysed. The study reveals a relatively higher supply of supporting ES from LULC located inside the park compared to the ES supplied from surrounding forests, tea gardens, and oil palm and rubber plantations. Provisioning ES were greater in surrounding forests than from SNP. Both regulating and cultural ES were also higher in LULC within the park. Spatially explicit ES supply assessment and mapping was found to be useful for land use planning and the prioritization of future management actions. Based on our findings, we suggest that PA managers should consider the ES framework as an effective tool for the future-oriented PAs management.