Abstract
Land use trade-offs among agricultural expansion, residential growth, and ecological conservation remain understudied across Sub-Saharan Africa. The production-living-ecological (PLE) framework—a widely used tool in territorial spatial planning–has not been systematically validated for analysing cross-sectoral land use interactions in this region. To address this gap, we apply the PLE framework to Tanzania for 2000–2020, integrating 30 m land use data with multiple spatial datasets. Using land use transfer matrix, optimized hotspot analysis, standard deviational ellipse, and geographical detector, we quantify spatiotemporal patterns, conversion pathways, and driving forces. Results show that production and living spaces expanded continuously at the expense of ecological space, driven mainly by agricultural encroachment into forests and grasslands. Rural residential areas exhibited accelerated growth after 2010. Ecological spaces maintained the highest spatial agglomeration degree, whereas living spaces displayed rising spatial concentration over the study period. The dominant drivers shifted from natural factors (soil type, precipitation, topography) in 2000 to socioeconomic factors (population density, GDP density, and road network density) by 2020—a trend that underscores the growing influence of human activity on land use transitions. Optimized hotspot analysis further indicates that the expansion hotspots of production spaces transferred from the Central Zone to the Western Zone and Southern Highlands Zone, while hotspots of living spaces were persistently concentrated within the Lake Zone. By disentangling phased land use transitions and their spatially explicit trade-offs, this study provides the first comprehensive PLE evaluation of a major East African agricultural economy. The reproducible analytical framework we develop offers empirical support for land use governance and territorial planning across Sub-Saharan Africa, demonstrating that the PLE approach can be effectively adapted to address critical land system challenges in African contexts.
Subjects
- Ecology
- Environmental sciences
- Environmental social sciences
Abbreviations
- PLE:
Production-living-ecological
- RS:
Remote sensing
- GIS:
Geographic information system
- SRTM:
Shuttle radar topography mission
- GHSL:
Global human settlement layer
Funding
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 42101309; 42301314; 42161144003, the Annual Projects of the Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning of Henan Province, grant number 2024BSH037, the Training Plan for Young Backbone Teachers in Higher Education Institutions in Henan Province, grant number 2025GGJS082, and the Key Science and Technology Program of Henan Province, grant number 262102211032.
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Zhang, J., Liu, Y. & Fan, J. Quantifying land use trade-offs in Sub-Saharan Africa: spatiotemporal dynamics and drivers of production-living-ecological spaces in Tanzania (2000–2020).
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-64654-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-64654-x
Source: Ecology - nature.com
