I am trying to quantify the ES of a river and I want to use this tool for my study, but I am not able to figure out that this tool will work for my study.
Can I extract the ecosystem services of a river and plastic as threat to aquatic ecosystem services?
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Hi @abhi_4889,
None of the InVEST models specifically model the effect of plastic.
Each InVEST model focuses on a particular ecosystem service. There is no model that comprehensively models all ecosystem services provided by a river (or any other natural feature).
A few InVEST models are tangentially related to your question, but I think it is probably not what you’re looking for. To my knowledge, none of these models were designed with plastic pollution in mind, and they haven’t been used or validated for plastic pollution in any study.
Carbon storage/sequestration:
The Coastal Blue Carbon model represents carbon sequestration by coastal ecosystems as affected by land use change. Changes in plastic pollution could be modeled as a land use change, if the plastic affects the ecosystem’s ability to sequester carbon.
Biodiversity:
The models GLOBIO, Habitat Quality, and Habitat Risk Assessment model generic threats or stressors to habitat from human activity, which could include plastic pollution.
Water Quality:
The SDR and NDR models represent the ecosystem service of vegetation preserving water quality by retaining sediment and nutrients. However they are specifically designed for sediment and particular nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus). I do not think they would be generalizable to plastic.
If do you find or create a plastic pollution model, please let us know!
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Thank you @esoth for your response, I am already following your suggestion and started working on Habitat Quality with respect to plastic pollution. It would be a great help if you can help me in this as there are a few factors like HABITAT SUSTAINABILITY SCORE, I am not able to find the source or method of getting the desired outcome.
Hi @abhi_4889 -
The challenge of using these models is finding data that is relevant to the landscape and species that you are studying. Factors like habitat suitability and threat sensitivity will be related to the specific species (or group of species, etc), threats, and land cover types that you’re modeling. Unfortunately, there’s not much general guidance for this, so you’ll need to talk with experts and/or do a literature search to find these values.
~ Stacie
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