Land-use monitoring of tree-crop diversification in eastern Côte d’Ivoire: Landscape structure changes and implications for sustainable landscape development

Tree-crop diversification is increasingly adopted in tropical agricultural landscapes as a resilience strategy amidst fluctuating commodity markets, environmental change, and policy shifts. However, its spatial implications at the landscape level remain underexplored. This study examines the structure and dynamics of mosaic landscapes in eastern Côte d’Ivoire, a region characterized by heterogeneous landscapes, in response to tree-crop diversification trends and their implications for sustainable landscape management. Using multi-temporal Landsat imagery (1986, 2016, 2023), remote sensing classification with a Random Forest algorithm, and landscape metrics, we evaluated changes in land-use/land-cover (LULC), landscape composition (diversity, regularity), and landscape configurational heterogeneity (complexity and fragmentation). Results reveal a substantial increase in rubber plantations (net gain of 50.35%), with concurrent declines in cropland (−147%), cocoa (−45.28%), and sparse vegetation (−61.48%). Although landscape diversity increased slightly (Shannon index: 0.99 to 1.07), fragmentation intensified, with mean patch size decreasing by 12.3%. While tree-crop diversification introduced new compositional complexity, it often manifested as monoculture expansion rather than ecologically restorative land-use. The resulting structural transformations, characterized by high edge densities and smaller, isolated patches, suggest diminished functional connectivity of natural habitats and increasing ecological vulnerability. These trends raise critical questions about the long-term sustainability of current land-use trajectories. We argue that tree-crop diversification, while enhancing economic stability, can erode ecological resilience without integrated landscape-level planning and policy intervention. We recommend landscape-scale strategies that promote agroecological diversification, ecological corridor conservation, and inclusive land-use governance to mitigate fragmentation and maintain the multifunctionality of these rapidly transforming landscapes.