Economic value of shrublands’ ecosystem services in mainland Portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Aung, Zin Win Htet
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/30853
• topic: Ecossistema -- Ecosystem; Ecosystem service value; Portugal; Shrublands; Mata; Valor dos serviços do ecossistema

In spite of being an integral component of the Portuguese landscape, shrublands are greatly undervalued and generally deemed barren, unproductive territories, largely because of the lack of knowledge of the biome’s role and the ecosystem services it provides. In this paper, we tackle the unprecedented task of making an economic valuation of the mainland Portugal shrublands, quantifying the value of its ecosystem services in monetary terms, and therefore rendering it more visible and accessible for decision-makers and policymakers, as well as the wider public. Mainland Portugal shrubland data was collected from COS mainland Portugal 2018 GIS dataset and analyzed through QGIS tool, showing that it represents 12.4% of the total mainland territory. Through benefit and data transfer methods of valuation, monetary values were obtained for the ecosystem services of carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and land degradation prevention. Those values were later converted to the same USD 2022 currency values and combined, amounting to a total value that ranges between 1 225 million and 7 918 million USD/yr, depending on the specific model of evaluation used. This value that represents between 0.5% and 1.25% of Portugal’s GDP and 12% to 78% of the output of the country’s agricultural industry in 2022.