Applying ecosystem benefit valuation to inform quarry restoration planning

Jost Wilker, Karsten Rusche, Alexander Benning, Michael A. MacDonald and Phillip Blaen

Ecosystem Services, 2016, vol. 20, issue C, 44-55

Abstract: European societies and economies depend heavily on a steady supply of materials extracted from quarries. Due to this dependence, a significant amount of space in Europe is covered with minerals extraction sites. For each of these, plans for the post-extraction phase are a policy-required need. The decision on after-use offers room for support by appropriate information to assess which restoration scenario delivers the highest benefits for society and nature. In this paper, we suggest an approach for assessing the wide range of information on ecosystem benefits that are provided by alternative restoration scenarios. Three case studies are presented, for which we develop and discuss integrated ecosystem benefit valuation approaches. The results suggest that, for these three case studies, the value of socio-cultural fulfillment provided by conservation-focused restoration outweigh the value of benign climate that is foregone by restoring to habitats with lower carbon storage and sequestration. Further, these site-specific results demonstrate how information can be narrowed down to be relevant for decision making in quarry restoration. Communication of these results is also key to improve decision making in quarry restoration, in order to increase ecosystem service knowledge among all stakeholders involved.

Keywords: Ecosystem benefit valuation; Quarry restoration; Ecosystem services knowledge; Decision making support; Valuation framework; Restoration scenarios (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041616301139
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoser:v:20:y:2016:i:c:p:44-55

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2016.06.003

Access Statistics for this article

Ecosystem Services is currently edited by Leon C Braat

More articles in Ecosystem Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().