Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Resources, ‎University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran‎

2 ‎Department of Environmental Sciences & Engineering,Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, ‎Ardakan ‎University, Ardakan, Iran

3 ‎‎Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Birjand, ‎Birjand, Iran

10.22059/jrwm.2024.377327.1768

Abstract

Establishing a balance between protection and utilizing ecosystem services is a primary challenge in land management. ‎Quantifying ecosystem services and assigning them value to mitigate the impacts of human actions may offer a potential ‎resolution. Among the ecosystem services under significant pressure from exploitation is the quality of plant habitats. This ‎study was explored in evaluating plant habitat quality in Kerman province and focused on one of its functions, namely the ‎cultivation of medicinal plants. The InVEST method is used for modeling, whose inputs are layers of destruction resources, ‎land use, and tables of threat and sensitivity resources, and the plant habitat quality map as an output has values in the score ‎ranging from 0 to 1. Valuation of the habitat service layer was also done according to the allowed harvest price of rangeland ‎medicinal plants. The results showed that valuable habitats are mainly covered by dense grasslands. The habitat hotspots ‎extracted by the Jenks natural breaks algorithm showed that their area was 3,358,768 hectares, which includes 37% of ‎rangeland land and 1% of the total area of the province. Also, according to the value of Moran’s index, it has a significant ‎clustered distribution. (z-score=1328.83, p-value=0.00). Evaluation results showed that the total value of rangeland in the ‎province is more than 32 billion tomans, the share of low and high-density rangeland are 12053925412 and 19948204105 ‎tomans respectively. The results of this study can be used as an effective decision-support tool for prioritizing areas for ‎conservation and management measures in the entire province.‎

Keywords

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