Integrating Ecosystem Service Values into Oil Spill Impact Assessment

Depellegrin, D. and Blažauskas, N., 2013. Integrating ecosystem service values into oil spill impact assessment. The catastrophic effects that oil spills have on coastal resources, the complex task of decision making during oil spill response, and the need for operational reasoning induce decision makers to seek science-based decisions. In light of these circumstances, spatially explicit, economic-impact assessment models can deliver an immediate assessment tool for preliminary oil-spill damage cost-quantification using a monetary unit as an indicator. The model presented in this study is based on an ecosystem-services assessment using economic evaluation methods such as travel cost, benefit transfer, and direct-market pricing. Ecosystem services were estimated for the 92-km-long Lithuanian coast using existing geographic information system (GIS) data sets. Outputs from the ecosystem-services assessment indicated that the total, annual economic value of biological and socioeconomic resources in t...