Economic Valuation of Natural Ecosystems` Production and Regulation Functions using Cost-Based Methods; Case Study: Chalous Watershed-Iran

Natural resources as a life support system provide many goods and services. In last decades, because of land use change, these valuable ecosystems have been degraded. Due to lack of appropriate market for valuation, these services have been ignored. In order to protect them, the valuation of ecosystem goods and services seems inevitable. In this study, in order to valuate ecosystem damage, Landsat TM/ETM+ satellite images were utilized to estimate landuse and cover changes in Chalous Watershed in Iran in 3 time-periods (7891, 0222, and0277) by ENVI software. Then, among all the goods and services timber production, carbon sequestration, oxygen production, protection of water sources and biological control were selected. Methods used in this study include Market Valuation Methods and techniques based on the Cost Methods such as Replacement Cost Method and Damage Cost Avoided Prevention. Finally, the lost value of each of the services is presented in US dollar per hectare. The loss in the period of this study has been estimated 77, 28498, 28300, 28297 and28212 million $ for timber production, carbon sequestration, oxygen provision, Water conservation and biological pest control services respectively. The total amount of loss in the study area and during mentioned temporal dimension has been estimated about$70million. It should be noted, due to lack of data this amount is the minimum damage of land use change but this study provides appropriate tools for environmental managers and planners to conserve natural resources and prohibit them from detrimental land use change

کلیدواژه ها:

Valuation ، Landuse Change ، Replacement Cost Method ، Damage Cost Avoided