scholarly journals Spatial analysis, local people’s perception and economic valuation of wetland ecosystem services in the Usumacinta floodplain, Southern Mexico

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e8395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Camacho-Valdez ◽  
Andrea Saenz-Arroyo ◽  
Andrea Ghermandi ◽  
Dario A. Navarrete-Gutiérrez ◽  
Rocío Rodiles-Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Economic Valuation ◽  
Rapid Assessment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Spatially Explicit ◽  
Biodiversity Indicators ◽  
Southern Mexico ◽  
Rural People ◽  
Wetland Ecosystems ◽  
Local Perception

The Usumacinta floodplain is an exceptional area for biodiversity with important ecosystem services for local people. The main objective of this paper was to estimate reference values and define local perceptions of ecosystem services provided by wetlands and overlapping them with spatially explicit socioeconomic and biodiversity indicators. We used the Usumacinta floodplain as an example of a territory where high dependence of rural people on ecosystem services is confronted with development projects that threat the flow of ecosystem services, thus affecting rural people well-being. With a combination of data from remote sensing, global databases of ecosystem service values, local perception of ecosystem services and socioeconomic and biodiversity richness indicators in a spatially explicit framework, we develop a policy-oriented approach for rapid assessment to manage wetlands and maintain people’s livelihoods. Regulating and provisioning services are identified as the most relevant ecosystem services in terms of their monetary value and local perceived importance. In a spatially explicit manner, this approach highlights the most valuable wetlands and identifies rural societies that are highly dependent on ecosystem services. Our approach can be replicated elsewhere and could provide valuable information for policymakers to design policies that can contribute to conserve wetland ecosystems where under threat of development.

scholarly journals The Framework of Ecosystem Services for Economic Valuation Purposes: A Review

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 434-449
Author(s):  
Nguyen Minh Duc
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Resource Management ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Natural Resource Management ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Ecosystem Service ◽  
Economic Valuation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Past

Although humans need ecosystems and ecosystem services for their survival and well-being, most of the global ecosystems and the services that they provide have declined and/or degraded rapidly over the past few decades. In order to find the ways to sustainably use natural resources, substantial efforts have been made to measure and value the ecosystem services. The term ‘ecosystem service’ was interpreted in different ways in the literature. For making correct decisions in natural resource management, a consistent way of defining and classifying ecosystem services is needed for valuation purposes. This paper argued for the need to divide ecosystem services into intermediate and final services.

scholarly journals The development of the concept of ecosystem services: A review of foreign Publications

2015 ◽  
pp. 26-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. E. Konyushkov
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Economic Valuation ◽  
Recent Decade ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Market Values ◽  
Valuation Of Ecosystem Services ◽  
Number Of Publications

Foreign publications devoted to the problems of determination and valuation of ecosystem services and their practical application in planning economic activities are under review. This direction of studies is being rapidly developed. It was clearly shaped after the global Millennium Ecosystem Assessment performed in 2005 on the initiative of the United Nations. In the recent decade, this direction has got an official status; specialized journals have been founded; regular conferences and workshops have been conducted. The number of publications in this field has increased considerably. The contribution of soil scientists to the valuation of ecosystem services remains modest. It is argued that the assessment and valuation of the ecosystem services of soils is a promising direction for soil science. Ecosystem services are subdivided into the groups of provisional, regulating, cultural, and supporting services. The latter group is considered the natural basis ensuring the efficient performance of other ecosystem services with their direct or indirect impact on human well-being. The assessment of ecosystem services implies three major directions: ecological, economic (monetary), and social. For each of the groups of ecosystem services, specific methods of their economic valuation are applied. Thus, provisional services are mainly assessed according to their market values. The contribution of provisional services to the total value of ecosystem services is relatively small. Regulating services are often estimated by the avoided cost and replacement cost methods, and cultural services (recreation, inspiration source, aesthetic value, spiritual value) are valued by the travel cost method. The methods of nonmarketable valuation are essentially based on the willingness-to-pay approach. Upon valuation of ecosystem services at the local level, a systems approach should be applied; it is necessary to taken into account cooperation bonus obtained by the particular stakeholders. It should also be noted that the removal of additional pressures from ecosystems in a given place might result in the increase of the anthropogenic loads on ecosystems in other places. The separation, mapping, and valuation of ecosystem services are performed with an ultimate goal to ensure sustainable development of the society and human well-being. The ecological and economic approaches in this field are actually aimed at strengthening of the role of market mechanisms in the environmental protection policy.

Valuation of Wetlands Preservation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Dehnhardt ◽  
Kati Häfner ◽  
Anna-Marie Blankenbach ◽  
Jürgen Meyerhoff
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Wetland Ecosystems ◽  
Geographical Regions ◽  
The World ◽  
Flood Regulation ◽  
Meta Analyses

All types of wetlands around the world are heavily threatened. According to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, they comprise “areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish, or salt.” While they are estimated still to cover 1,280 million hectares worldwide, large shares of wetlands were destroyed during the 20th century, mainly as a result of land use changes. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), this applies above all to North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, but wetlands were also heavily degraded in other parts of the world. Moreover, degradation is expected to accelerate in the future due to global environmental change. These developments are alarming because wetlands deliver a broad range of ecosystem services to societies, contributing significantly to human well-being. Among those services are water supply and purification, flood regulation, climate regulation, and opportunities for recreation, to name only a few. The benefits humans derive from those services, however, often are not reflected in markets as they are public goods in nature. Thus, arguing in favor of the preservation of wetlands requires, inter alia, to make the non-marketed economic benefits more visible and comparable to those from alternative—generally private—uses of converted wetlands, which are often much smaller. The significance of the non-market value of wetland services has been demonstrated in the literature: the benefits derived from wetlands have been one of the most frequently investigated topics in environmental economics and are integrated in meta-analyses devoted to synthesizing the present knowledge about the value of wetlands. The meta-analyses that cover both different types of wetlands in different landscapes as well as different geographical regions are supplemented by recent primary studies on topics of increasing importance such as floodplains and peatlands, as they bear, for example, a large flood regulation and climate change mitigation potential, respectively. The results underpin that the conversion of wetlands is accompanied by significant losses in benefits. Moreover, wetland preservation is economically beneficial given the large number of ecosystem services provided by wetland ecosystems. Thus, decision-making that might affect the status and amount of wetlands directly or indirectly should consider the full range of benefits of wetland ecosystems.

scholarly journals Economic valuation of ecosystem services in Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 183 ◽  
pp. 01002
Author(s):  
Aya Jamouli ◽  
Khali Allali
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Choice Experiment ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Economic Valuation ◽  
Market Price ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Valuation Methods ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Web

Ecosystems provide vital services that improve and support livelihoods and human well-being. Consequently, scientific research on ecosystem services (ES) has increased, over the past two decades globally, as well as in Africa. This study provides an overview of existing economic ES valuation methods in Africa using the Web of Science databases. The results highlighted that South Africa recorded the high number of ES valuation publications. The most evaluated ES category was provisioning then regulating services. In terms of economic valuation methods, the market price was the most popular, followed by the contingent valuation and the choice experiment methods. Recommendations are provided for future research in this filed.

scholarly journals The mismeasure of nature: the political ecology of economic valuation of Tiger Reserves in India

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajit Menon ◽  
Nitin D Rai
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Economic Valuation ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Political ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Institutional Contexts

<p>The Indian state has conserved tigers by establishing reserves that are governed as a form of fortress conservation. Residence and local uses in these tiger reserves are often criminalized. It is in this context that we critique recent neoliberal attempts to estimate the economic value of ecosystem services from tiger reserves. Proponents of valuation argue that it will not only provide a justification for the reserves, but also recognize the importance of ecosystem services for human well-being. We use a political ecology approach to argue that economic valuation is never a benign tool, but is situated in wider institutional contexts that favor certain actors over others. In India, protected areas are being valued even as people living within them are being evicted and their use of the forest restricted. We draw from fieldwork in the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Hills of Karnataka and conversations with Soligas. We ask how nature is made legible and who benefits from such legibility? We suggest that economic valuation can hide complex human-nature relationships and undermine different ways of knowing and 'valuing' landscapes.</p><p><strong>Key Words</strong>: tiger reserves, Karnataka, economic valuation</p>

scholarly journals Attitudes and Preferences towards Soil-Based Ecosystem Services: How Do They Vary across Space?

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 8722
Author(s):  
Luisa Fernanda Eusse-Villa ◽  
Cristiano Franceschinis ◽  
Mara Thiene ◽  
Jürgen Meyerhoff ◽  
Alex McBratney ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Spatial Heterogeneity ◽  
Soil Conservation ◽  
Choice Experiment ◽  
Economic Valuation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Geographic Pattern ◽  
Soil Resources ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Soil Ecosystem Services

Soil ecosystem services (ES) provide multiple benefits to human well-being, but the failure to appreciate them has led to soil degradation issues across the globe. Despite an increasing interest in the threats to soil resources, economic valuation in this context is limited. Importantly, most of the existing valuation studies do not account for the spatial distribution of benefits that soil ES provide to the population. In this study, we present the results of a choice experiment (CE) aimed at investigating spatial heterogeneity of attitudes and preferences towards soil conservation and soil ES. We explored spatial heterogeneity of both attitudes and welfare measures via GIS techniques. We found that citizens of the Veneto Region (Northeast Italy) generally have positive attitudes towards soil conservation. We also find positive willingness-to-pay (WTP) values for soil ES in most of the study area and a considerable degree of heterogeneity in the spatial taste distribution. Finally, our results suggest that respondents with pro-environmental attitudes display a higher WTP based on the geographic pattern of the distribution of WTP values and attitudinal scores across the area.

scholarly journals Spatial Evolution of Prosopis Invasion and its Effects on LULC and Livelihoods in Baringo, Kenya

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Purity Rima ◽  
Wai-Tim Ng ◽  
Urs Schaffner ◽  
Maina Gichaba ◽  
Dan Olago ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Time Interval ◽  
Wet Season ◽  
Alien Plant ◽  
Rural People ◽  
Random Forest Classification ◽  
Lulc Changes ◽  
Forest Classification ◽  
Landsat Satellite

Woody alien plant species have been deliberately introduced globally in many arid and semi-arid regions as they can provide services and goods to the rural poor. However, some of these alien trees and shrubs have become invasive over time, with important impacts on biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being. Prosopis was introduced in Baringo County, Kenya, in the 1980s, but since then it has spread rapidly from the original plantations to new areas. To assess land use and land cover (LULC) changes and dynamics in Baringo, we used a combination of dry and wet season Landsat satellite data acquired in a 7-year time interval between 1988 and 2016 and performed a supervised Random Forest classification. For each time interval we calculated extent of the invasion, rates of spread and gains and losses of specific LULC classes. We further assessed the relative importance of Prosopis invasion on LULC changes and ultimately on the provision of ecosystem services rural people depend on. Overall accuracy and kappa coefficients of the LULC classifications ranged between 98.1 % and 98.5 %, and 0.93 and 0.96, respectively. We found that Prosopis coverage increased from 882 ha in 1988 to 18,792 ha in 2016. Highest negative change in LULC classes was found for grasslands (-6252 ha; -86 %), irrigated cropland (-849 ha; -57 %), Vachellia tortilis dominated vegetation (-3602 ha; -42 %), and rainfed cropland (-1432 ha; -37 %) &ndash; all of them important categories with regard to rural people&rsquo;s livelihoods. Prosopis invasion alone directly accounted for over 30% of these negative changes, suggesting that Prosopis invasion is a key driver of the observed LULC changes in Baringo County. The observed rates of invasion are alarming and ask for urgent implementation of coordinated and sustainable Prosopis management in Baringo and other invaded areas in East Africa.

scholarly journals Integrating GeoDesign with Landscape Sustainability Science

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Huang ◽  
Weining Xiang ◽  
Jianguo Wu ◽  
Christoph Traxler ◽  
Jingzhou Huang
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Sustainability Science ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Spatially Explicit ◽  
World Population ◽  
Landscape Sustainability ◽  
Landscape Sustainability Science

With an increasing world population and accelerated urbanization, the development of landscape sustainability remains a challenge for scientists, designers, and multiple stakeholders. Landscape sustainability science (LSS) studies dynamic relationships among landscape pattern, ecosystem services, and human well-being with spatially explicit methods. The design of a sustainable landscape needs both landscape sustainability–related disciplines and digital technologies that have been rapidly developing. GeoDesign is a new design method based on a new generation of information technology, especially spatial information technology, to design land systems. This paper discusses the suitability of GeoDesign for LSS to help design sustainable landscapes. Building on a review of LSS and GeoDesign, we conclude that LSS can utilize GeoDesign as a research method and the designed landscape as a research object to enrich and empower the spatially explicit methodology of LSS. To move forward, we suggest to integrate GeoDesign with LSS from six perspectives: strong/weak sustainability, multiple scales, ecosystem services, sustainability indicators, big data application, and the sense of place. Toward this end, we propose a LSS-based GeoDesign framework that links the six perspectives. We expect that this integration between GeoDesign and LSS will help advance the science and practice of sustainability and bring together many disciplines across natural, social, and design sciences.

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