FUNCTIONAL VALUE OF BIODIVERSITY – PHASE II Activity 1: Pantropic/meso-scale analysis and synthesis Searching for Synergy in Tropical Forest Ecosystem Services: Historic and Projected Land Cover Scenarios for Exploring Biodiversity and Watershed Function Linkages

......................................................................................................................................... vi 1. Report and Project Overview...................................................................................................... 1 2. Introduction................................................................................................................................. 2 2.1 The tropical forest-hydrology link: evidence and misconception......................................... 5 2.2 Biodiversity........................................................................................................................... 7 2.3 Focus of the study ................................................................................................................. 8 3. The Pan-Tropical Assessment.................................................................................................... 9 3.1 Delineating the Pan-Tropics ................................................................................................ 9 3.2 Representing Pan-Tropical Biodiversity............................................................................. 11 3.3 Evaluating Pan-Tropical Land Use/Land Cover Change.................................................... 23 3.3.1 Agriculture Conversion and Scenario Development .................................................. 24 3.3.2 Scenario 1: Historical changes in land cover – What damage have we done? .......... 26 3.3.3 Developing scenarios for projecting from current to modeled future land cover conditions ..........................................................................................33 3.3.4 Scenario 2: Projected deforestation of tropical forest areas vulnerable to change – What might we lose?............................................................................................................. 34 3.3.5 Scenario 4: Business as Usual.................................................................................... 37 3.4 Modeling the Hydrologic Effects of Land Use/Land Cover Change ................................. 39 3.5 The Influence of Geophysical Characteristics in the Pan-Tropics...................................... 44 4. Results and Discussion ............................................................................................................ 48 4.1 Pan-Tropical Overview of Changes in Landcover & Hydrology ....................................... 48 4.2 Intersection of landcover change with BDI and terrain ...................................................... 54 4.3 Intersection of landcover change with BDI and population ............................................... 58 4.4 Intersection of landcover change, hydrology and human vulnerability.............................. 60 4.5 Central America Sensitivity Analysis................................................................................. 65 4.6 Biodiversity-Population-Hydrologic Hotspots ................................................................... 68 4.7 Data and Modeling Limitations ............................................................... 69 5. Summary and Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 71 6. References................................................................................................................................. 75