Environmental valuation of land cover change: Cerro de Patamban, Tangancícuaro, Michoacán

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to perform the environmental valuation of land use change in Cerro de Patamban, Michoacán, by valuing the decrease in ecosystem services due to the change in land cover. It was started by deter mining the areas that presented a difference in the class of coverage using available cartographic information on land use for 1973 and 2017, after which the plant formations modified on the surface at the end of the period were identified, then based on literature and under no pretention of exhaustion, the ecosystem services to be valued were identified: carbon capture, erosion control and water catchment. Costs per hectare of each mentioned service and plant formation were established to relate them to the increase or decrease of area and obtain the monetary difference, the potential amount of income and cost of the ecosystem rehabilitation were considered to finally determine the monetary amount involved in the land use change. The general value of 97.671 million pesos was found, composed mainly of the concepts of carbon capture and ecosystem rehabilitation, each contributing more than 47 million pesos, followed by water catchment with 2.3 million, while erosion control and loss of income represented less than 0.5 million pesos each. With the aforementioned, it is concluded that it is possible to quantify the environmental impact by the land use change in economic terms as a reference value to promote sustainable systems of natural resources management.