Variations of ecosystem service values as a response to land use and land cover dynamics in central malawi

Impact of Land Use/ Land Cover Changes on Ecosystem Service Values in the Cherangany Hills Water Tower, Kenya

“…This study used the BTA to estimate the study area's ESVs due to the lack of local-level data ( Costanza et al, 1997 ;Hu et al, 2008 ;Richardson et al, 2015 ). Numerous studies have used a similar approach through the benefit transfer method, which refers to the process of utilizing existing values from an original research to estimate the ESVs of other similar locations in the absence of site-specific valuation data ( Gashaw et al, 2018 ;Kindu et al, 2016 ;Munthali et al, 2022 ;Rai et al, 2018 ;Sharma et al, 2019 ;Talukdar et al, 2020 ;Temesgen et al, 2018 ;Tolessa et al, 2017 ). Modified conservative local value coefficients developed for 9 biomes by Kindu et al (2016) were adopted for this study to determine ESVs due to the unavailability of historical data for our study area and the high cost of ground data…”

“…Moreover, the CS values of ecosystem services are always independent of the percentage change of the ES coefficient defined by the user ( Aschonitis et al, 2016 ). Several studies have also been conducted to estimate ESVs changes in response to LULC changes without incorporating the CS analysis ( Biratu et al, 2022 ;Gashaw et al, 2018 ;Msofe et al, 2020 ;Munthali et al, 2022 ;Sharma et al, 2019 ). Therefore, there is a need to come up with a more reliable method that takes into account the uncertainty of the model and the biomes it represents.…”

“…, and Malawi( Munthali et al, 2022 ) Kindu et al (2016). modified the coefficients from those employed byCostanza et al (1997) through a benefit transfer method using expert knowledge of the study landscape conditions and other studies, mainly from TEEB valuation database which comprised more than 1300 original values compiled mainly based on local studies across the globe ( Van der Ploeg et al, 2010 ) and( Knoke et al, 2011 ).…”