Assessing the Impacts of Future Land Use and Land Cover Changes on Ecosystem Services in a Coastal City of Bangladesh using an Integrated Approach

Abstract

Urban ecosystem services provide environmental and socio-economic benefits; however, these services are not considered during policy making and urban development processes. Satellite imageries and published Ecosystem Service Value (ESV) coefficient with benefits transfer method has been used to estimate ESV in response to Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULC). We used Artificial-neural-network-based cellular automaton (ANN-CA) model to simulate LULC in 2030 and 2050 based on LULC data from 1990 to 2020. Predicted results reveal that agricultural land, barren land, vegetation, and water bodies are likely to decline by 7.56%, 3.06%, 12.22%, and 1.77%, respectively, between 2020 and 2050, but built-up areas are expected to increase by 24.61% owing to urbanization, industrialization, and economic growth. ESV results indicate that vegetation and agriculture make up 70% of the overall ESV, making them the leading LULC groups. The overall ESV could fall by 8.95 US$ ×106/year, mostly due to a decline in agricultural land, waterbodies, and vegetation. This study also identified the contribution of individual Ecosystem Services (ES) functions to the overall ESV. In 2020 and 2050, the ratio of provisioning, regulating, and supporting services to overall ESV is expected to decline from 19.95–8.77%, 39.60–25.60%, and 28.80–13.63%, respectively. On the contrary, the proportion of cultural services to total ESV will rise from 11.66% in 2020 to 52% in 2050, illustrating the rising importance of non-material ecological benefits like as recreation and tourism. The tool utilized in this study, which combines LULC with ES valuation, will aid policymakers and urban planners in current and future sustainable land management.