Land use and land cover change, trade-offs, and synergies between ecosystem services in a dry Afromontane Forest

• Between 1985–2020 dense forest areas were consistent, farmland and bare land decreased, while open forest increased. • Areas not classified as ecosystem services hubs made up over half of the total study area. • We found trade-off relationships fluctuating magnitudes between ES over the studied period. • Different analysis methods showed different magnitudes in the trade-off relationships. The role of tropical forests in satisfying various human demands is growing, leading to increasing conflicts, particularly between forest conservation and usage. This creates a challenge for forest managers and decision makers. While conservation mitigates global climate change, utilization is crucial for local subsistence. This competition often results in trade-off relationships between ecosystem services, which are exacerbated by land use change. In this context we studied the spatial and temporal land use and land cover change in the Desa’a forest, a dry Afromontane Forest in norther Ethiopia, from 1985 to 2020 and analyzed trade-off and synergy relationships between one provisioning (food supply) and two regulating ecosystem services (soil conservation, carbon storage) using ArcGIS Pro and R software. Dense forest, constituting 23% of the study area, remained constant throughout the study period. Farmland and bare land decreased by 3% and 13% respectively, while open forest, constituting more than 50% of the area, increased by 16%. The trade-off and synergy analysis revealed ecosystem services relationship fluctuations in the magnitude of the relationships during the studied period. In conclusion, our study has revealed that the trade-offs and synergies of ecosystem services display variations in their timing, geographical distribution, and intensity, much like the ecosystem services hubs and land use/land cover changes. These three interrelated aspects hold significant implications for management decisions and therefore, must be given due consideration. Our findings help in understanding ecosystem services dynamics and can support sustainable forest management and conservation strategies. Incorporating a temporal dimension to trade-off and synergy analyses can reveal how past decisions on the use of land and its resources impact today’s ecosystem services and their interactions.