Economic impact assessment of land use change on the Hyrcanian Forests ecosystem services in Northern Iran

Land-use change has been recognized  as a primary driver of ecosystem degradation and the decline of ecosystem services worldwide, often resulting in substantial economic consequences. This study aims to analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics of land use and land cover (LULC), investigate landscape pattern changes, and estimate the economic losses associated with forest land-use change in the Hyrcanian forests of Guilan Province, Iran from 2012 to 2022. The LULC map was classified into five categories including forest, built-up (residential), water, agriculture, and rangeland. LULC maps were generated using Landsat 7 (ETM+) and Landsat 8 (OLI) imagery on the Google Earth Engine platform. A supervised Random Forest (RF) classifier was applied, incorporating spectral indices including the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI) to enhance class separability. The classification achieved an overall accuracy of over 80% and kappa coefficients of 0.61, 0.63, and 0.68 for the years 2012, 2017, and 2022 respectively. Landscape pattern changes were subsequently analyzed using Fragstats software. The results reveal considerable landscape transformation during the study period. Forest area declined from 621475 ha in 2012 to 611915 ha in 2022, while built-up areas expanded from 28937 ha to 38637 ha and agricultural lands increased from 343046 ha to 412768 ha. Conversely, water bodies decreased from 64397 ha to 45898 ha, and rangeland and barren land declined from 346545 ha to 295182 ha. Economic valuation, conducted using the Benefit Transfer method, revealed substantial losses resulting from forest area reduction, with the most severe decline occurring during 2012–2017 (12851 ha of forest loss). This loss represented approximately 5.1% of the provincial Gross Domestic Product (GDP), equivalent to approximately $308.2. These findings underscore the critical importance of integrating ecosystem service valuation into regional land-use planning and sustainable forest management policies.