Measuring the Ecosystem Services Value of Kalimpong District (West Bengal), India with Respect to Land Use Land Cover Dynamicity

Ecosystem services may be defined as profits human gain from ecosystems and it provided four major categories of ecosystem services like cultural, regulating, provisioning, and supporting service also known as ecological integrity. Ecosystem is the main base for creation of service which is essential for people benefits. In this paper, LULC map of the district are prepared by satellite image landsat-5 for 1991 and landsat-8 for 2021 using ArcGIS 10.3.1 software. The district is characterised by seven categories of LULC like water bodies, build up area, agriculture land, agriculture plantation, agriculture fallow land, social forestry and forest. Forest cover area and agriculture plantation of district were reduced from 1991 to 2021 because forest cover area was 51.47 % in 1991 and 36.94 % in 2021 and area of agriculture plantation was 9.81% in 1991 and 7.49 % in 2021. The LULC map was applied along with coefficient of ecosystem service values of biomes that propounded by Costanza and his group 1997 and 2014 to understand the spatio-temporal transformation in the value of ecosystem service of landscape. The paper represents a total of US$ 3.83 million of ecosystem services was decreased as per Costanza and his group, 1997 and US$ 1.37 million of ecosystem services was increased as per Costanza and his group, 2014 due to LULC transformation from 1991 to 2021. Ecosystem service value of forest cover area was reduced. Coefficient of sensitivity analysis applied to evaluate the reliability of ecosystem service value and finally the output results are more reliable due to the value of coefficient of sensitivity is <1 that indicates inelastic.