Methods for forest eco-service value evaluation:A review

The significance of forest ecological benefits is increasingly emerging,and the scientists and governments in the world are paying attentions to the evaluation of forest eco-service value,which promotes the growing up of related methods.This paper summarized the research progress on the methodologies of evaluating forest eco-service value,and classified the related commonly used methods into three types,i.e.,market-based methods,energy-accounting methods,and software model methods.The first two methods still have some limitations.They are deficient in checking the rationality of substitution method,ignore the multi-criteria in forest ecosystem management,lack of considering surrounding affecting factors,doubly count a variety of ecological values,and lose sight of the scarcity in eco-service value.To overcome these limitations,this paper introduced the features and superiorities of software GUMB,CITYgreen,and Invest.Based on the review,the research directions for China forest eco-service value evaluation in the future were put forward:1) further explore the relationships between forest ecosystem structure and function,2) improve the applicability of related foreign evaluation methods,and 3) undertake more studies on the feedback from eco-compensation.