Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services Provided by Oyster Reefs

By Jonathan H. Grabowski, R. Brumbaugh, R. Conrad, A. Keeler, J. Opaluch, C. Peterson, M. Piehler, Sean Powers, A. Smyth. 2012

628 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Valuation of ecosystem services can provide evidence of the importance of sustaining and enhancing those resources and the ecosystems that provide them. Long appreciated only as a commercial source of oysters, oyster reefs are now acknowledged for the other services they provide, such as enhancing water quality and stabilizing shorelines. We develop a framework to assess the value of these services. We conservatively estimate that the economic value of oyster reef services, excluding oyster harvesting, is between $5500 and $99,000 per hectare per year and that reefs recover their median restoration costs in 2–14 years. In contrast, when oyster reefs are subjected to destructive oyster harvesting, they do not recover the costs of restoration. Shoreline stabilization is the most valuable potential service, although this value varies greatly by reef location. Quantifying the economic values of ecosystem services provides guidance about when oyster reef restoration is a good use of funds.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/68b31f7d979fa1f57c5bbee2f2ca224a56780596

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In Economics and Econometrics

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In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

The Ecosystem Services of Marine Aquaculture: Valuing Benefits to People and Nature (2018, background): “For example, shellfish habitats, such as oyster reefs, provide important high-value functions through filtration, denitrification, stabilization of sediments and shorelines, and the creation of habitat for associated species (Grabowski et al. 2012).”
Restoring shellfish reefs: Global guidelines for practitioners and scientists (2020, background): “…role shellfish reefs perform in coastal systems, including water filtration, coastal protection, and fish production (e.g., Coen et al., 2007; Grabowski et al., 2012), has led to widespread interest in their restoration and protection (Baggett et al., 2014, 2015; Gillies et al., 2015;…”
Linking the biological impacts of ocean acidification on oysters to changes in ecosystem services: A review (2017, methodology): “…water quality 633 affects the provision of ESs by other healthy and functioning species and 634 habitats, such as economically important seagrass beds (Cerco and Noel, 635 2007; Coen et al., 2007; Dennison et al., 1993; Grabowski et al., 2012; Kahn 636 and Kemp, 1985; Meyer et al., 1997).”
Quantifying fish and mobile invertebrate production from a threatened nursery habitat (2016, background): “While augmented fish production is an important ecosystem service often considered in oyster reef conservation and restoration efforts, oyster reefs are valued and managed for a suite of additional services including shoreline stabilization, anthropogenic nitrogen removal and seagrass habitat enhanc”
Investing in Natural and Nature-Based Infrastructure: Building Better Along Our Coasts (2018, methodology): “Maintenance and repair costs were converted to annual costs assuming a 50-year life pan and do not include p j cts that involved compl te structu e replacement [33]; c Ecosystem ser ice values per square meter ( 2) of oyster and salt marsh habitat components f living shorelines for the services of f”