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- Title
The Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services: Economic Value-Based Management in a Case Study of Protected Areas in Iran.
- Authors
Zandebasiri, Mehdi; Azadi, Hossein; Shirmardi, Hamzehali; Jahanbazi Goujani, Hassan; Iranmanesh, Yaghoub; Shamsoddini, Shahbaz; Fakhimi, Elham; Mokhtarpour, Touraj; Gholipour, Zeinab; Viira, Ants-Hannes
- Abstract
Valuing the ecosystem services can relate the concepts of structure and function to management issues. The absence of a valuation system endangers the ecosystem services, such as regulating services, that cannot be traded in the economic market. Valuing the ecosystem services can facilitate managers’ and policy makers’ understanding of ecosystem services and their place in decision-making processes. To protect the Protected Areas (PAs), the ecosystem components, opportunities, and threats should first be identified for these ecosystems. In this study, the ecosystem services were evaluated for three services (i.e., forage production, oxygen production, and carbon sequestration), and market pricing methods as well as alternative values were used for valuing these services. The study area was Tang-e Sayad protected area in Iran. The field studies include the implementation of 24 transects and using the plots with 2 m × 2 m dimensions at a distance of 100 m from each other. Based on the results, the value of the protected area for the above three ecosystem services was 4173 USD per hectare per annum, which is a significant amount. Of this amount, 1% is related to the value of forage production, 19% to oxygen release, and 80% to carbon sequestration. These values can be a good guide for planning to focus on carbon sequestration and to reduce grazing pressure in the protected area. It is suggested that valuation processes continue, especially in protected areas, so that they can be used in protection decisions and prioritization of the ecosystem services in policy-making for the PAs.Article Highlights: Valuing the ecosystem services can provide solutions for optimal management in PAs. The regulation services have much greater economic value than the provisioning ecosystem services. Carbon sequestration in Tang-e Sayad protected area in Iran has the highest economic value among the studied ecosystem services. Among the types of carbon sequestration, soil carbon sequestration is higher than all types of sequestration values.
- Publication
International Journal of Environmental Research, 2023, Vol 17, Issue 4, p1
- ISSN
1735-6865
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s41742-023-00536-8