Vincent de Leijster

84 Chapter 5 Abstract Many ecosystem services are decreasing globally, and they urgently need to be restored to safeguard the benefits they supply to people’s quality of life. Agroforestry interventions may act as catalysts for ecosystem service development and changes in supply. This study investigates the trajectories of ecosystem services in coffee systems with a different time since transition to agroforestry in Colombia, the interactions among ecosystem services, and the biotic and abiotic factors that explain them. To do so, we used a space-for-time- substitution approach to reconstruct a chronosequence of agroforestry coffee farms, with 1-40 years since planting of shade trees. We analyzed the development of carbon stock, habitat provisioning, erosion control, pest control and provisioning services. We found that above-ground carbon stock, habitat provisioning, timber volume and coffee bean quality followed asymptotic trajectories, analogue to the changes in canopy characteristics (canopy cover and canopy height). Erosion control and pest control did not change over time. Coffee yield differed between farms, and although yield tended to decrease as the shade trees matured, this was not significant. We found consistent positive relationships between carbon stock, erosion control and epiphyte richness. A trade-off between above- ground carbon stock and coffee yield was found for the first 10 years only, while a positive relation between coffee yield and erosion control was found for the long term (10-20 y after implementation of agroforestry). Canopy cover best explained ecosystem service supply, but also farm agrochemical input management and location characteristics (altitude and slope) influenced the supply. This study demonstrated that agroforestry can be used to rehabilitate ecosystem service supply within the first 10 years after planting trees. The supply of most ecosystem services increases until reaching a saturation level at approximately 20 years after agroforestry implementation.