Ecosystem services valuation with QSIS 3.1

Dear all,
I want to assess the economic value of the loss of ecosystem services linked to the mining activities of an area from 1974 to 2020. I already realised the land use map with four classes(Mining site, bare soil, vegetation and water body). I would like to know what should be the next steps. I will be very grateful if someone helps me.
Thank you

Hi @Djibril -

I am not an economist, so cannot speak to how to do the actual monetary valuation, but I will mention a few steps from the spatial modeling aspect, and questions that might help others provide more information.

First, which services are you interested in? And who is experiencing the change in monetary value? A hydropower plant operator? Timber company? Tourism operators? Farmers? Different services, and different beneficiaries, are likely to need different methods for quantifying monetary value.

Have you already created scenario land use maps, showing the differences in land use between 1974 and 2020? If not, you will need to make those scenario maps. Then you can use the maps as input to the ecosystem service models that you are interested in, to quantify the change in services due to the change in mining area.

If you are actually putting a monetary value on this change, you will need to calibrate the model results to observed data, so you feel confident that the model results are representing reality accurately. For this, you would calibrate whatever you consider your baseline scenario, then use the calibrated model values for running the other scenarios. Calibration is also different for different services, and some services (like pollination) are harder to calibrate than others (like water quality.)

Finally, all I do know about economic valuation is that it is generally complex, and requires specialized data. For example, if you are valuing the change to a hydropower plant, you would need to know how the hydropower system works, how much power is generated, what are the costs of generation, the price of electricity, etc.

For one example of how we have done this for drinking water, hydropower and farming, please see these reports from the Upper Tana Water Fund.

If you have more specific questions about the valuation portion, hopefully an economist will chime in.

~ Stacie

Dear Stacie,

Thank you very much for answer with good comments.

To answer some of your questions, I am only interested in regulating services and I will focus on carbon storage and sequestration. I didn’t create scenarios, I just classified the Landsat images (1974, 1994 and 2020) according to four classes (Mining site, vegetation, Bare soil and water body). So, I want to use the InVEST Carbon Model, to quantify the value of carbon storage and sequestration, the aim is to determine 1) rates of sequestration; 2) storage pools/sinks and 3) the net present value of sequestration. I hope the end, this valuation will produce a number, USD per metric tonne of carbon, which can be used to determine the distribution of carbon credits