Assessing and Modeling the Impacts of Wetland Land Cover Changes on Water Provision and Habitat Quality Ecosystem Services

Understanding the spatial–temporal dynamics of wetland land cover (LC) changes and their impacts on ecosystem services (ESs) is essential for wetland conservation and management. This study aimed at quantifying and predicting water provision and habitat quality ecosystem services and analyzing their response to LC changes using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model. Firstly, LC maps were created for 1987, 1998, 2007, and 2017 using the index-based and supervised approach and were then used to predict LC changes for 2027 and 2047 using the cellular automata and Markov chain (CA–Markov) model. The Shadegan wetland, located in the southwest of Iran, was chosen as the case study. The results showed that, during the study period (1987–2017), the LC with major increasing area was bare land while the LC with major decreasing area was wetland vegetation. In addition, the wetland tended to be a fragmented mosaic with less connectivity. The results of ESs modeling showed that the highest and lowest water yield values, which were almost 68 × 106 m3 and 26 × 106 m3, were observed in 1998 and 2017, respectively. In the meantime, the area with high-quality habitats has reduced (by 33.58%) and has gradually been replaced by moderate- and low-quality habitats, and the same trend will continue in 2027 and 2047. Based on these results, we conclude that changes in wetland LCs have resulted in variations of the wetland ESs. This site-specific study of the InVEST water yield and habitat quality models enables us to explore the applicability of spatially explicit modeling and simulating of wetland ESs to improve wetland conservation and management. The findings on the spatial–temporal analysis of wetland LCs and ESs can promote wetlands decision-making processes and taking effective conservation actions.