Finance

Environmental resource management

Ecosystem

Climate change

Business

Valuation (finance)

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation

Forest management

Ecosystem services

Biology

Logging

Biodiversity

Ecosystem management

Forest inventory

Geography

Ecology

Programming language

Forest restoration

Deforestation (computer science)

Forest product

Carbon stock

Computer science

Amazon rainforest

Ecoforestry

Forestry

Environmental science

Agroforestry

Forest ecology

Nature Sustainability

The Brazilian Amazon forest is tremendously important for its ecosystem services but attribution of economically measurable values remains scarce. Mapping these values is essential for designing conservation strategies that suitably combine regional forest protection with sustainable forest use. We estimate spatially explicit economic values for a range of ecosystem services provided by the Brazilian Amazon forest, including food production (Brazil nut), raw material provision (rubber and timber), greenhouse gas mitigation (CO2 emissions) and climate regulation (rent losses to soybean, beef and hydroelectricity production due to reduced rainfall). Our work also includes the mapping of biodiversity resources and of rent losses to timber production by fire-induced degradation. Highest values range from US$56.72 ± 10 ha−1 yr−1 to US$737 ± 134 ha−1 yr−1 but are restricted to only 12% of the remaining forest. Our results, presented on a web platform, identify regions where high ecosystem services values cluster together as potential information to support decision-making. This study spatially maps the economic value of some major ecosystem services provided by the Brazilian Amazon. It also estimates changes in these values under scenarios of degradation and low-impact logging.

Spatially explicit valuation of the Brazilian Amazon Forest’s Ecosystem Services