Application of different assessment approaches among ecosystem services considering demand and supply focused on forest carbon

Ecosystem services are composed ecologic functional processes and socio-economic circumstances. The assessment of the ecosystem functions and services is essential in decision making processes; however, conceptual complexity of the ecosystem services hinders many decisions and communication among policy makers, stakeholders, and local communities. In the Republic of Korea, ecosystem services have been assessed by various approaches, but mainly previous assessments depended on the potential supply side of forest carbon ecosystem services. Therefore, this study tried to clarify demand and supply side of ecosystem services through developing a hypothetical assessment framework which can be applied to assessment procedures. The methods based on National Forest Inventory, Statistical Yearbook of Forestry, and the InVEST models were considered suitable to be applied to integrate the national statistics and spatio-temporal datasets as the supply. The demand is indiscriminate and non-exclusive, so public survey was conducted using 660 and 510 samples with ±3.10 maximum allowable error. The annual CO₂ sequestration as the supply was derived from 45,671,000 ton CO₂ (minimum of 545.2 billion won) to 53,306,000 ton CO₂ (maximum of 4.948.2 trillion won) in 2010 and 2015, respectively, with different approaches. With considering the value from the demand, the value of forest carbon ecosystem services can be 594,280 KRW when recognized as the equilibrium demand and supply of ecosystem services. The assessment framework for ecosystem services that considers demand and supply may consist of various forms and can help bridge the gap in value recognition in societal policy through an assessment of ecosystem services.