Changes in carbon storage with land management promoted by payment for ecosystem services

RESEARCH ARTICLE The effects of check dams and other erosion control structures on the restoration of Andean bofedal ecosystems Brett D. Hartman 1,2 , Bodo Bookhagen 1,3 , Oliver A. Chadwick 4 Restoring degraded lands in rural environments that are heavily managed to meet subsistence needs is a challenge due to high rates of disturbance and resource extraction. This study investigates the efficacy of erosion control structures (ECSs) as restoration tools in the context of a watershed rehabilitation and wet meadow (bofedal) restoration program in the Bolivian Andes. In an effort to enhance water security and increase grazing stability, Aymara indigenous communities built over 15,000 check dams, 9,100 terraces, 5,300 infiltration ditches, and 35 pasture improvement trials. Communities built ECSs at different rates, and we compared vegetation change in the highest restoration management intensity, lowest restoration management intensity, and nonproject control communities. We used line transects to measure changes in vegetation cover and standing water in gullies with check dams and without check dams, and related these ground measurements to a time series (1986–2009) of normalized difference vegetation index derived from Landsat TM5 images. Evidence suggests that check dams increase bofedal vegetation and standing water at a local scale, and lead to increased greenness at a basin scale when combined with other ECSs. Watershed rehabilitation enhances ecosystem services significant to local communities (grazing stability, water security), which creates important synergies when conducting land restoration in rural development settings. Key words: Aymara, human-environment system, indigenous people, land restoration, NDVI, wet meadow Implications for Practice • Check dams increase bofedal vegetation and standing water at a local scale but can also lead to landscape-level effects that extend beyond the surface area covered by check dams. • The effects of large-scale and long-term restoration efforts need to be evaluated in the context of environmental change resulting from regional shifts in climate and land use. • Check dams and other erosion control structures can increase grazing stability and water security for local com- munities. When land restoration is aligned with the provi- sion of ecosystem services, indigenous people are capable of achieving extensive areas of land restoration even under continued agriculture and grazing management. Introduction Significant portions of the world’s tropics have been degraded by human use, with land degradation concentrated in dryland montane areas managed by the rural poor (Bridges & Oldeman 1999; Lambin et al. 2003; Bai et al. 2008). Local and indigenous people can be effective at ecosystem restoration, provided there is sufficient social coordination and mobilization (e.g. Walters 2000; Long et al. 2003; Mingyi et al. 2003; Stringer et al. 2007; Blay et al. 2008). However, restoration efforts in rural environ- ments that are heavily managed to meet subsistence needs are November 2016 Restoration Ecology Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 761–772 often complicated by high levels of disturbance from agricul- ture, grazing, fire, and biomass harvest (Brown & Lugo 1994; Lamb et al. 2005). To improve restoration success in rural devel- opment settings, there is a need to better understand restoration dynamics where land use pressure is high and management objectives include restoring ecosystem services important to local communities (e.g. grazing stability and water security). A geographic region where intensive management by rural poor populations has led to environmental degradation is the Central Andes of South America (Ellenberg 1979; Sarmiento & Frolich 2002). The Central Andes are dominated by dry, tropical montane Puna grasslands composed of bunchgrasses, rosette-forming herbs, and dwarf shrubs in upland positions, and bofedal vegetation composed of rosette-forming herbs and cushion-forming species in seeps, springs, wet meadows, and floodplains (Squeo et al. 2006). Large portions of the Central Author contributions: BDH, BB OAC designed research; BDH performed research; BDH, BB analyzed data; BDH, BB, OAC wrote the manuscript. 1 Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, U.S.A. 2 Address correspondence to B. D. Hartman, email hartman@geog.ucsb.edu 3 Institute of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Street 24-25, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany 4 Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, U.S.A. © 2016 Society for Ecological Restoration doi: 10.1111/rec.12402 Supporting information at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rec.12402/suppinfo