Predicting Changes in the Supply of Ecosystem Services Related to Biodiversity Due to Land Use Changes in the Shafarood Watershed of Guilan Province

Severe land use change in recent decades has affected the ability of ecosystems to provide services, so it is necessary to be aware of the trend of these changes and their impact on ecosystem services for sustainable land management. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of land use change on biodiversity services in the Shafarood watershed in Gilan province.

The present study consists of three steps: 1) Extraction of past and present land use maps using Landsat satellite images using ENVI 5.3 and ArcGIS 10.3 software 2) Prediction and extraction of future land use maps using Scenario Generator tool of InVEST software and finally 3) Quantitative evaluation and modeling and mapping of ecosystem services related to biodiversity using the Habitat Quality model of InVEST software.

The results showed that habitat quality has decreased sharply over time under the influence of land use changes, and habitat degradation has increased sharply so that the average habitat quality for the entire study area for 2000, 2020, and 2040 are equal to 0.88, 0.64, and 0.41respectively. Also, the average habitat destruction for the whole Shafarood watershed in 2000 is equal to 0.0021, in 2020 equal to 0.0042, and for 2040 equal to 0.0061.

According to the obtained results, it can be argued that the increase of human development activities with the aim of acquiring and exploiting natural lands has caused irreparable damage to the structure of natural lands and plant and animal habitats and the continuation of such a process will lead to the risk of complete destruction of these unique resources.