Stakeholder priorities determine the impact of an alien tree invasion on ecosystem multifunctionality

1. While the ecological impact of environmental change drivers, such as alien plant invasions, is relatively well-described, quantitative social-ecological studies detailing how these changes impact multiple ecosystem services, and subsequently stakeholders, are lacking.

2. We used a social-ecological approach to assess how Prosopis juliflora (Prosopis henceforth)¸ an invasive tree, affects the provision of multiple ecosystem services to different stakeholder groups in a degraded East African dryland. We combined plot-based ecological data on the impacts of the tree on indicators of ecosystem service supply with questionnaire survey data describing ecosystem service priorities from eight different stakeholder groups. This data was then used to quantify how tree invasion impacted individual ecosystem services, and the overall supply of services, relative to the priorities of each stakeholder group, using an ecosystem service multifunctionality metric.

3. In the study area, we found...