Assessing ecosystem services in Russia: Case studies from four municipal districts

The task of organizing ecosystem accounting and integrating the value of ecosystems and ecosystem services into the management process has been set in Russia. The municipal level is the key one in the system of ecological spatial planning. However, the analysis of the official documents on spatial planning in Russia revealed that ecosystem services are still to be integrated into them. This paper aims to develop guidelines for the formation and implementation of integrated plans for the development of rural areas in the aspect of ecosystem development. The suggested methods of ES evaluation and monetization are based on the use of open statistical data and available digital land cover maps. This way, ecosystem services were calculated in biophysical indicators by converting the area of different types of ecosystems into the demanded and supplied volumes of ecosystem services. The described approaches were approbated on four municipal districts in different federal subjects of Russia (Kiznerskiy district in the Udmurt Republic; Elizovskiy district in Kamchatskiy krai; Maikopskiy district in the Adygeya Republic; and Bobrovskiy district in Voronezh oblast). It reveals that carbon regulation makes up the major part of a total ecosystem services value in the studied districts, thus making regulating services constitute the largest share of the total supplied ecosystem services volume. Recreational and other cultural ecosystem services do not make up a considerable part of the total ES value in any district. These evaluations, on the one hand, form an incomplete and exaggerated idea of ecosystems’ value as a source of natural resources; and on the other, detract their regulating and cultural services, which are also extremely significant for the sustainable development on different spatial levels.