Abstract
Mainstreaming the concept of ecosystem services has been receiving increasing attention in recent years. In most studies on ecosystem services assessments, global, sub-global or local levels were addressed.
More recently, development of ecosystem services assessments at national level is emphasized (e.g. by Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 or EU Biodiversity Strategy 2020). Following this trend, integrated assessment of ecosystem services is being conducted in the Czech Republic.
Our study focuses on the identification and valuation of ecosystem services available in the Czech Republic. We developed a database of values to estimate the value of ecosystems in the Czech Republic.
Primary structure of the database is given by six ecosystem types (agricultural ecosystems, grasslands, forests, aquatic ecosystems, wetlands and urban areas) and 17 ecosystem services delivered from these ecosystems. Ecosystem types are further classified based on habitat approach into 41 ecosystem categories.
A specific literature review strategy was conducted to fill the database by both biophysical and economic values of ecosystem services. As the study applies benefit transfer method, it was also considered as a key issue to present our strategy to reduce generalization errors.
Currently, the database consists of more than 190 values of ecosystem services which were statistically evaluated. Approximately a half of them was used for a benefit transfer to calculate total ecosystem values in the Czech Republic.
The resulting average value of ecosystem services in the Czech Republic represents 1.5 the current national GNP (in 2012).