Identification and Assessing Economic and Social Services of the Natural Ecosystems to rural communities

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Sareh Hosseini ¹
• Jafar Oladi ²
• Hamid Amirnejad ³

¹ University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran

² Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University, Sari, Iran

³ Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University, Sari, Iran.

10.22067/jrrp.2025.90648.1114

Abstract

Purpose- Protected areas (PA) are effectively managed places dedicated to the long-term conservation of biodiversity and natural values ​​with associated ecosystem services and cultural values. Forest and rengland ecosystems of national park provide a wide range of environmental, economic, and social services to human communities, with a variety of stakeholders. One of the beneficiaries of forest ecosystem services is the rural communities on the edge of forests. The proper and appropriate use of natural resources plays an important role in empowering local communities and affects their socio-economic status.
Design/methodology/approach- In this research, forest and rangeland ecosystem of the Kiasar National Park (KNP) was selected in Iran for assessing the social and economic natural ecosystems services to rural communities. For achieving the research goal, the Delphi questionnaire inclouding a set of indicators for natural ecosystems assessing extracted from various sources is used to identify the indicators of economic, and social services, Entropy and TOPSIS techniques to calculate their weight and prioritize, respectively. Also, GIS has been used to map the economic and social services of the natural ecosystems of KNP. In this study, 36 specialists in the field of national parks answered the Delphi questionnaire.
Findings- In this research exteracted 38 indicators including 20 social indicators and 18 economic indicators that among them, 7 economic indicators and 11 social indicators accepted and customized to assess the social and economical services of natural ecosystems. Then preparation capability map (Potential map) in four classes based on their weight and priority overplayed. The results indicated that recreational value, and interests and contributions from to rural communities protect and develop the park indicators had the highest priority in assessing the economic and social services of natural ecosystems. The KNP capability map showed that 1810.50 ha of the park was in the very suitable class and 34.30 ha was in the suitable class from a social perspective to serving beneficial rural communities.

Keywords

• Stakeholders
• Socio-economic Ecosystem Services
• Multi-Criteria Decision Making
• Delphi Method
• Kiasar National Park

Main Subjects

• Rural Studies

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