Addressing the modelling precision in evaluating the ecosystem services of coastal wetlands

Abstract

Wetlands are one of the world's most productive ecosystems, and therefore it is crucial that management decisions regarding wetlands incorporate awareness of accurate assessments of the value of their respective ecosystem services. In this paper, we seek to improve the modelling precision in the scale transform process of ecosystem service evaluation. Firstly, we selected eight services as the criteria to calculate wetland ecosystem values: substance production, flood control, carbon sequestration, gas regulation, climate regulation, wave reduction, adding new lands, recreation and education. Then, six coastal wetlands of Liaoning province were chosen as the case study areas, and their ecosystem values were calculated by empirical method. Next, we simulated ecosystem values of the six cases by two spatial-scales transform methods named meta-analysis and wavelet transform. Finally, we compared the two groups of simulated values with the empirical measured values to examine their evaluation precisions. The results indicated that the total precision of the wavelet transform model (0.968) was higher than that of meta-analysis (0.712). In addition, the simulated values of single services such as substance production, flood control, carbon sequestration, gas regulation, and climate regulation were closer to the measured values using wavelet transform model. This research contributes to identifying an evaluation model with higher precision for evaluating wetland ecosystem services in the process of scale transform.