Assessing the Impact of Land Use Change on Ecosystem Services Supply (Carbon Storage and Sequestration)

Ecosystem services are benefits that people obtain directly or indirectly from ecosystems. InVEST software was used for assessing the impact of land use change on carbon storage and sequestration. This study, covering the years1984, 2010 and projecting for the year 2036 was implemented using Markov–Cellular Automata in the eastern part of Gorgan-rud watershed in Golestan Province. The amount of carbon stored in carbon pools includes aboveground biomass, belowground biomass, soil and dead organic matter. These pools were extracted based on IPCC guidelines. Assessed and modeled trend of land use change showed that forest area covering more than 50 percent of the study area in the year 1984 reaches less than 20 percent of study area up to the year 2036. Results showed that land use change trend have caused a decrease and will do so in terms of the carbon storage. According to the results between years 1984 and 2010, around 815.2 km2 of the study area has experienced negative carbon sequestration. With the continued trend in deforestation, around 401.9 km2 will be added to this amount up to the year 2036. Integrating ecosystem services results with land use planning and land use management requires spatial maps of ecosystem services in regional scales that was emphasized in this study.