Abstract
An emergy concept was used to evaluate the contributions of the Youngsan River Estuary to the Korean economy from systems and ecosystem service perspectives. Total emergy input to the estuary was 9.42×10 20 sej/yr with the chemical potential of river inflow accounting for 73% of the total and tidal energy for the remaining 27%, reflecting the unique environmental characteristics of estuaries where rivers meet sea. From the systems perspective, the estuary ecosystem contributed 179.9 billion em￦/yr (14.91 million em￦/ha/yr or 13,526 em$/ ha/yr). Four ecosystem services of the Youngsan River Estuary were selected for the emergy evaluation: fishery production, pollutant removal, aesthetic function, and scientific research information. Aesthetic function contributed the most to the Korean economy with 179.9 billion em￦/yr, followed by fishery production (101.1 billion em￦/yr), pollutant removal (32.6 billion em￦/yr), and scientific research information (934 million em￦/yr). Emergy-based values of the selected ecosystem services of the estuary were higher than those calculated by economic methodologies.
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