ESTIMATING ECONOMIC VALUES OF KELP FORESTS AND SEAWEED BEDS ECOSYSTEM SERVICES IN KOREA
Ecosystem services are benefits that people can obtain from the ecosystems. Ecosystem services of marine plants such as seaweed, kelp, seagrass and mangrove have been attracting public attention as they provide services that benefit to the human life. Moreover it is crucial for decision makers to understand ecosystem services for deciding policy actions for influencing human multiple activities and components of the ecosystem and informing managers and planners which decision should they take, for example for the appropriate scale and location of a number of conservation and sustainable development activities.
Types of ecosystem services provided by kelp forests and seaweed beds can be grouped into regulating services (e.g. coastal protection, carbon sequestration); supporting services (e.g. nursery, feeding and breeding ground, nutrients cycling); cultural services (e.g. spiritual, education, recreational value); provisioning services (e.g. food, raw materials).
Even though ecosystem services by kelp forests and seaweed beds support in many ways of human life, the services have been greatly undervalued by society because almost all of these services cannot be traded in the formal market and not easy to be estimated. Until now true economic values of ecosystem services by kelp forests and seaweed beds are uncertain or have not been calculated yet as no valuating methods have been developed and applied.
Based on the gaps found, the economic values of ecosystem service provided by kelp forests and seaweed beds need to be evaluated and therefore, it is also a crucial requirement for developing valuation methods and applications.
This study is aimed to consider valuation methods for ecosystem services provided by kelp forests and seaweed beds and to evaluate the economic values of ecosystem services. Economic values of ecosystem services can be generated from CO2, Nitrogen and Phosphorus reduction and biofuel production, etc. In order to develop valuation methods for kelp forests and seaweed beds ecosystem services, sufficient data are needed such as biological (e.g. biomass), physical (e.g. salinity and temperature) and chemical (i.e. nitrogen and phosphorus uptake rate) and socio-economic (e.g. total number of kelp farmers, number of aquaculture/cultivation location, total number of harvested per year and total area of aquaculture/cultivation, market price, etc) data.