Value of ecosystem services in China

The function and services are the important components of the life-support system in the planet, as well as the basic elements for sustainable development of environment and society. It is a must to evaluate it for incorporating it with the social-economic system. It is also an important approach to draw the public attention on the environmental and ecosystem conservation. In this study, the ecosystem function and services in China were estimated by employing the classification and economic parameters from Costanza et al. The type and area of terrestrial ecosystems were extracted from Vegetation Map of China (1.4 000 000), and then the distribution map of ecosystem services of China was drawn. According to our calculation, the total value of ecosystem services in China is 77 834.48x10(8) RMB yuan per annum. The value for terrestrial ecosystem is 56 098.46x10(8) yuan per annum, and that for marine ecosystem is 21 736.02x10(8) yuan per annum. The value of ecosystem services in China is 1.73 times bigger than GDP in 1994. The value for forest ecosystem services is 15 433.98x10(8) yuan per annum, which is 27.51% of the total annual ecosystem services in China. Although wetland is little in area, its ecosystem service value is huge, which is 26 736.9x10(8) yuan per annum. The value for grassland ecosystem is 8 697.68x10(8) yuan per annum. Coastal ecosystem service is 12 223.04x10(8) yuan per annum. Overall, the ecosystem service in China contributes 2.71% to that of our planet. The estimation method employed in this study was a conservative one, and should be improved in the future studies.