Abstract:
Natural ecosystems provide services that contribute to human well-being such as food,
medicines, fuel, wood, fresh water, and climate regulation. In spite of this, most natural
ecosystems have been converted or modified into agricultural areas and other human land
use to maximize single-purpose use. The study is to determined the spatio-temporal pattern
of land cover change from 1984 to 2019 in Sokoto-Rima River Basin; assessed residents’
perception of changes in ecosystem service provision in the study area; and analyzed the
impact of land cover change on ecosystem services in the study area. The research method
used multi-temporal data (Landsat satellite images) to assessed the pattern of land use land
cover, the information gathered from structured questionnaire ware used to assessed the
changes in forest ecosystem services and types of services being used for their benefits and
Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) were used to
analyzed the impact of land use land cover on forest ecosystem in the study area. The
result shows that 1984 to 2019 forest area had decreased at the rates of 7.29% and 9.45%
from 1984 to 2019, only 28% are more aware of ecosystem services. Also 55% of the
respondents are aware of the forest area has been reduced. About 87.3%, 79.1% and 76.4%
of the habitats were of a high quality found in 1984, 2002 and 2019. About 29.7% in 2019
having the highest percentage of habitats lost followed by 23.9% in 2002 and 13.7% in
1984 habitats lost. Human induced impacts resulted in loss of biodiversity services and
degradation that negatively affected the delivery of other ecosystem services, there was
trade-off between human induced land use and biodiversity conservation. Land uses such
as farmland should find ways to accommodate biodiversity conservation
