...or "How much is that river worth?"
The assigned ecosystem service for
me to report is “rivers.” What are they worth? I can hear James Brown singing
“Rivers! Heyaheyaheya, What are they good for…absolutely nothin’, say it
again.” Well, OK, he was singing about war – totally different thing.
Of all the water on the planet, 97%
is in the oceans (Skinner, Porter, & Botkin, 1999, p. 190,) and rivers only
add up to %0.00015 of all of Earth’s water ("Earth's Water
Distribution," n.d.). That’s right, 15 thousandths of one percent. Heck,
there’s WAY more water just in snow and ice on our big sphere. So, what’s the
big deal about rivers and how do we put a value on them?
To write briefly about river ecosystem services may not even be possible,
especially when one considers the value of the systems that exist simply
because the rivers are in place, like the riparian buffer zones (the bank and
land area off to the sides of the actual water) or estuaries. You don’t get one
without the other, so they’re kind of inseparable. For that matter, if a river
is providing water for an agricultural zone in a valley bottom, it’s just as
impossible to separate the river value itself (say, just the water) from the
value of the crops it helps to create. Just the riparian zone itself is
responsible for sediment filtering, pollution filtering, pesticide filtering, bank
stabilization, aquifer recharge, rich soil habitats, water storage and release,
and more. That’s not even including the services of the river itself, the
actual water being transported, sediment-deposits-and-all to faraway places. And
THAT’S not even mentioning the habitat for entire ecosystems IN the water.
Science is starting to catch up with the idea of placing values on these
things, but it is very much in its infancy. We have to put a dollar amount on
how much money that place is worth, the one where you put your butt down next
to the water to fish! And then how much that fish you caught is worth.
Rivers are busy entities. They
erode, transport water, transport sediment, provide water source throughout all
the habitats they are in, they ARE the sole habitat for myriads of species and
communities, they create the landscape by cutting channels, and making alluvial
fans. They carry dissolved nutrients to other places, make deltas and
estuaries, disperse seeds, cycle and move nutrients, maintain biodiversity,
provide fresh water to human and animal populations, provide fresh water for
agriculture, create recreation activities, offer aesthetic experiences, and
more. Phew! That’s not even the whole of it, and that’s why I said it might be
impossible to write briefly on the
subject. Nevertheless, I try.
Fortunately, after much literature
review of my own, I found the coup de gras. It is a recent (2011) literature
review study done for The Nature Conservancy by Dr. Pamela Kaval, Ecological
Economist in Fort Collins, Colorado. This paper set out to place a value, as
much as can be determined at this point, to how much the Colorado River Basin
is worth in terms of ecosystem services. A mighty effort indeed!
One
way of valuing ecosystem services is to break it into just three parts: Direct values,
indirect values, and existence services. Direct values may include
transportation, water supply, fishing, and recreation. Indirect values include
flood protection, wetlands nutrient recycling, and genetic material. Existence
services are “river services that provide the needed habitat to allow current
biological ecosystems and their species to thrive. “(River Science at the U.S.
Geological Survey, 2007) That’s one way.
Dr. Kaval divided ecosystem
services into four categories:
information, production, regulation, and habitat. As you will see, I believe
this was a very good idea, as it also includes all the things we DON’T have to
pay for because the ecosystem is providing it for us (for “free.”) Here is an
example: The 1993 floods in the Mississippi valley resulted in property damages
around 12 BILLION dollars, partially from the valley’s inability to lesson the
impacts because the adjacent wetlands were drained and the channels altered
(ESA, 2013). Are these “river” services? I think so. Without the river, there
would be no wetland there.
Here is what Dr. Kaval means by the
four categories: Information services are functions that contribute to human
health, such as recreation, aesthetic experiences, and education. Production
functions result in an output of living biomass, such as food and raw materials.
Regulating services provide people with benefits, such as detoxification and flood
regulation, just from the things they do naturally. Habitat refers to those
functions that provide reproduction habitat and refuge to wild animals and
plants (Kaval, 2011).
So, without further pause, let me
summarize the summary. Actually, it is quite necessary, because the literature
review “summary” has many categories and didn’t have totals. Go figure.
Information
functions: $20,456,000,000 per
year – yep, 20.456 BILLION plus $228
- $454 per house per year.
Production: $29,500,000,000 per year ($29.5 Billion/year)
Regulation: This one is a little more tricky, as
it isn’t per-year so much:
o ~$298.00
per home per year
o $5,000-14,000
per home per year near the river (valuation differences due to being near
water.)
o $68,000,000
per year per 25% decrease in river level.
o And
there were some other small ones, but you get the point….
Habitat: She
noted that data was not found for this category specifically, but it directly
relates to the other ones.
So, to sum up, all in all, the
Colorado River Basin ecosystem services are worth about $50 Billion per year
(Kaval, 2011). The moral of the story should be; “be nice to your river, it’s
worth a lot of cash.” Of course, you wouldn’t need to tell me that, because I
grew up on a river and no amount of money could create a better environment to
grow up in/on/around. It was a little like Tom Sawyer, but with television on
cold, rainy days.
I haven’t mentioned the overall
function of rivers in the hydrologic cycle, the interplay between underground
water, atmospheric water, and ocean water. Those functions cannot be valued
short of life itself, but the quality of
the rivers might just have the ability to be valued.
And if all that isn’t enough for
you, the Riparian Tax Incentive Program of 1981 can offer landowners with
rivers complete tax breaks to take care of the riverbanks (Ecological Society
of, America, n.d.). Go government!
I
am not surprised that these amounts are what they are. I am surprised that they
were actually given A value, understanding how difficult it seems to find a way
to justify a particular amount. Some people may think this is overblown. I
don’t and I think (hope) we will get much better at proving these values.
As for me, I have mixed feelings
about placing dollar values on natural things. One part of me thinks it is a
terrible thing to do, like putting a value on your baby. The other, educated part of me, realizes
that we live in a capitalist society and that if we are going to succeed at
achieving environmental goals, we need to play the capitalist game and give
everything a value. EVERYTHING. In some strange way, it works.
References
Earth's water
distribution. (n.d.). Retrieved October 7, 2013, from
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/waterdistribution.html
Ecological Society of,
A. (n.d.). Fact sheet. Retrieved October 8, 2013, from Ecological Society of
America website: http://www.esa.org/ecoservices/comm/body.comm.fact.ecos.html
Kaval, P. (2011,
January). Ecosystem service valuation of
the Colorado river basin: A literature review and assessment of the total
economic value of the Colorado river basin. Nature Conservancy.
Skinner, B. J.,
Porter, S. C., & Botkin, D. B. (1999). The
blue planet: An introduction to earth system science (2nd ed.). New York:
J. Wiley.
Snow, P. (n.d.).
Riparian lands tax incentive. Retrieved October 8, 2013, from http://www.dfw.state.or.us/lands/tax_overview.asp
Colorado, especially the front range, was reminded in Sept of the value that a river can provide or take away.
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