Impact of land-use change on ecosystem services in Africa’s Great Green Wall

Africa’s Sahel faces severe land degradation, threatening livelihoods and regional stability. To address this challenge, the Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land. Achieving this goal requires an improved understanding of recent land use and land cover (LULC) dynamics and their impacts on ecosystem services. This study quantifies the impacts of land-use transitions between 2007 and 2019 on multiple ecosystem services and identifies spatial trade-offs and synergies to inform restoration planning across the GGW region. We integrated MODIS land-use/land-cover data with geospatial ecosystem service models and applied the Ecosystem Service Contribution Index (ESCI) to quantify the effects of LULC transitions on carbon stock, water yield, soil conservation, sand stabilisation, and grain production. Bivariate Moran’s I was applied to explore associations among services. Land use reconfigured substantially, with grasslands declining and cropland and barren land expanding. Ecosystem service responses were heterogeneous: carbon stock increased in the Ethiopian Highlands and Nigerian agricultural zones, and sand stabilisation improved in parts of Niger and Chad, whereas soil conservation and water yield declined in several arid areas. Grain production rose by 31.1%, but cropland conversion generated trade-offs with wind-erosion control and soil retention. Across climatic gradients, synergies emerged between carbon stock and soil conservation in wetter or highland zones, while trade-offs between provisioning and regulating services dominated in farmed and arid areas. These findings show that LULC in the GGW region is dynamic and variable, with changes enhancing ecosystem services in some areas and compromising them in others. To strengthen ecosystem resilience and support sustainable livelihoods, ecological restoration strategies need to vary in response to local ecological and social conditions.