Ecosystem service valuations of South Africa using a variety of land cover data sources and resolutions

Valuation of the ecosystem services of South Africa is useful for many reasons, including: 1) providing an evidence based justification for investment in ecological infrastructure by both public and private entities, 2) informing resource allocation decisions with respect to the protection, restoration, and preservation of ecosystem functioning, and 3) enhancing public appreciation for the value of nature and our societal dependence upon natural capital. We present national assessments of ecosystem services values (ESV) based on a combination of approaches. We explore assessments that are derived from global datasets (~1 km) and finer resolution national datasets (~30 m). The global product is classified into 11 biomes in South Africa and the finer resolution data into 35 land cover classes. We apply ecosystem service values from the TEEB database to the respective datasets via benefits transfer methodology to both spatial resolutions. We estimate the change in ESV that has taken place in South Africa over 24 years using the 30 m data set. Our initial estimates of the total value of ecosystem services in South Africa from the global data set were $(US) 497 billion/year (1 km resolution 2014 data). The findings from the finer resolution data were $675 billion/year (1990 data), and $610 billion/year (2014 data). This, most recent (2014) estimate of total ESV is roughly 1.5 times larger than South Africa's GDP ($350 billion in 2014).