Ecosystem service values and land use change in the opium poppy cultivation region in Northern Part of Lao PDR

Abstract

Land use change and land-cover impacts ecosystem services and functions. In this paper according to the study area’s land use characteristic and ecosystem type, the Land use category of the study area was divided into seven categories, including Forest, Grassland, Farmland, Water, Wetlands, Urban land and Barren land. The dynamic information of the forest Land use change during 10 years was calculated by the map algebra in ArcGIS 9.2. Both in 1992 and in 2002, Forest and Grassland were two largest Land use category in the study area. Forest took up 44.7% and 39.4% of the total area, and Grassland was 50.13% and 50.72% of the total area in 1992 and 2002. Finally, we valued change in ecosystem services delivered by each land use category using coefficients published by Costanza et al. [5]. Ecosystem services value of study area, the total ecosystem services value of 10.6 million hectares of this study area decreased by 11.74%. From the coefficient of sensitivity (CS) was less than unity in all case, it indicated that the total ecosystem services values was relatively inelastic and the results suggest that we have to pay attention more on land use change and finally, policy for driving forces of land use change were developed.