Valuing Ecosystem Services for the Protection of Coastal Wetlands Using Benefit Transfer Approach

Abstract

Wetland ecosystems provide a wide range of ecosystem services that are often neglected in the decision-making process, resulting in the overexploitation of resources. Quantification of the services generated by this dynamic landscape is critical to developing appropriate conservation priorities for wetland management. The biggest challenge is the lack of adequate knowledge on the economic value of wetland services and proper understanding of potential revenue opportunities associated with it. This chapter introduces an application of an open source tool for estimating the value of freshwater wetland ecosystem services. The Semi-Automatic Classification Plugin (SCP) integrated into the management infrastructure of Quantum Geographic Information Systems (QGIS) can facilitate the supervised classification of multi-spectral satellite images. Thus, a case study of Beel Dakatia, a freshwater wetland of southwest coastal Bangladesh, has been demonstrated to quantify the ecosystem services value (ESV) using the “value transfer method.” This study estimated the total ESV of the wetland by combining Landsat-8 images using land use land cover (LULC) datasets of the year 2020 with its previously published global value coefficients. The LULC was prepared using SCP of QGIS. The study estimated a total ESV of US$42.16 million for Beel Dakatia. The study also found that the more natural ecosystems, e.g., water body and vegetation, contributed the highest (96%) amount of ESV. Regarding ecosystem functions, water regulation contributed the highest (56.13%) ESV, followed by water supply (21.85%) and waste treatment (7.21%). These findings will help policymakers to adopt a sustainable conservation policy for the coastal freshwater wetlands of Bangladesh.