Elsevier

Ecosystem Services

Volume 24, April 2017, Pages 101-113
Ecosystem Services

Valuation of fish production services in river basins: A case study of the Columbia River

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.02.007Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A bio-economic model for valuing fish production services in large river systems.

  • Model is applied to salmon production in the Columbia River, USA.

  • Multiple ecosystem services are assessed.

  • Prioritizing salmon conservation improves benefits by over $8 million/yr.

  • Recreational fishing is the most economically valuable ecosystem service assessed.

  • Gains in economic welfare from fish production may not be fully exploited.

Abstract

This study uses a bio-economic model to assess the capacity of the Columbia River to provide a selection of four ecosystem services and estimates the actual use of those services in terms of net economic welfare. Our findings reinforce the observation that Columbia River habitat supports production of valuable fish species that provide: (i) food production from commercial fishing, (ii) recreational fishing, (iii) tribal subsistence fishing, and (iv) nutrient cycling services. Relative to the status quo, a 10% greater prioritization of salmon conservation via shifts in the flow regime would generate an increase of $4.8 million/yr in the net economic benefit from these services. A return to pristine flow conditions would raise this value to $19.5 million/yr. Re-prioritizing hydropower production to average 1976–1980 flow levels would result in a $3.5 million/yr loss of net economic benefits. Recreational fishing is the most important ecosystem service we assessed. Under some scenarios, this sector generates twice the value of the next largest sector (commercial fishing). Although managers have placed greater emphasis on fish conservation in recent decades, opportunities for gains in economic welfare from fish production in the Columbia River may not be fully exploited, particularly considering that our conservation scenario only minimally alters the flow regime relative to the hydropower priority scenario.

Introduction

The world’s rivers provide numerous benefits to society commonly referred to as “ecosystem services”. Capturing the total economic value (TEV) of these benefits can be a complex and uncertain task, but is nevertheless advocated by various researchers and can be used as a decision tool by resource managers (Pearce and Turner, 1990). The TEV of an environmental resource or ecosystem is the sum of its use and non-use values1. Non-use values are intrinsic to the resource and arise from the value people place on its existence. Use values arise from activities such as resource extraction, harvest, and recreation and more indirectly from various ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling, watershed protection or groundwater recharge. For example, rivers support fish populations, which are valued for use (e.g. commercial fishing, subsistence fishing, recreational fishing, nutrient cycling) and non-use (e.g. existence, cultural and spiritual) purposes (Daily, 1997).

In addition to fish production, river systems provide other services such as aesthetics, water supply for domestic and agricultural uses, water quality regulation, natural flood control (wetlands), opportunities for shipping and transportation, opportunities for recreation, and natural features that permit the construction of dams for hydroelectric power production and engineered flood control. Many of these uses compete with fish production systems, especially in larger rivers, and create tradeoffs among the various services that comprise the TEV of these rivers. For example, prioritizing hydropower development may cause fish production benefits to decline due to habitat degradation from blocked migration routes, or a less favorable flow regime. Hydropower is particularly relevant as it is increasingly attractive in many basins as a means to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

It is challenging for resource managers to assess such tradeoffs without some measure of value for each service. The total value of fish production services is particularly complicated to evaluate due to the range of non-use and use values as well as the need to measure changes in production resulting from changes in habitat quality.

To support river managers’ decision-making, we develop an approach for valuing several ecosystem services associated with fish production in any river basin where the natural hydrograph is significantly altered from its natural state by dams. As a case study, we use the production of Pacific Salmon (Onocorhynchus spp.) in the Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. We consider how changes in river management for hydropower production and salmon conservation affect: (i) productivity of Columbia River salmon populations, and (ii) resulting economic welfare implications for commercial fishing, subsistence fishing, recreational fishing and fish-related nutrient cycling.

Valuation of ecosystem services is a widely supported practice (Arrow et al., 1993), although standardized valuation of the full range of ecosystem services has proven difficult. Few studies focus on changes to net (rather than gross) economic welfare from fish production (Grantham and Rudd, 2015), including those caused by dam operations. Analyses that consider the impacts of hydropower production on fish production tend focus on only one or two ecosystem services provided by fish production (e.g. recreational fishing), and/or do not incorporate biological relationships linking salmon populations and altered flow regimes (Loomis, 1996, Douglas and Taylor, 1999, Layton et al., 1999).

There is general agreement among hydropower, flood control and conservation managers in the Columbia Basin that the altered flow regimes of the mainstem and major tributaries have had a substantive negative impact on salmon productivity (NPCC, 2014). However, to understand the resulting change in economic benefit from fish production, it is first necessary to establish a relationship between salmon survival and flow regimes at different stages of hydropower development. Our analysis draws on methods introduced by Knowler et al. (2003), including: (i) use of bio-economic modeling to estimate net economic benefits that are consistent with economic theory, rather than measuring only changes in revenue; (ii) estimation of general stock-recruitment relationships for basin-wide aggregate salmon populations (i.e. not just local streams and sub-populations); and, (iii) incorporation of habitat quality into the stock-recruitment relationship.

In this paper we estimate the value of the Columbia River salmon production system under four development scenarios that emphasize hydropower production and salmon conservation to different degrees. The primary objective of our evaluation is to assess how net economic benefits derived from Columbia River salmon change when habitat quality is altered to accommodate different management objectives and associated flow regimes2. We conclude with a discussion of results and potential improvements for future efforts.

Section snippets

Study area

The Columbia River is a large river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America that flows 2000 km from Canadian Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It is the fourth largest river in the United States by volume and collects runoff from a drainage basin roughly the size of France (∼671,000 km2), spanning portions of seven American states (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada) and one Canadian province (British Columbia) (Muckleston, 2003).

The river’s annual cycles are

Methods

In this section we detail the methods used to produce our valuation results when habitat quality is altered to accommodate different management objectives and flow regimes.

Results

First we present our results from the biological model (Table 3). To obtain these results, we set the average escapement for all species from 1967 to 2000 (780,036 spawners) as the constant escapement. Commercial, recreational and tribal subsistence harvests are determined using the proportions identified in Table B.2 (Appendix B). Table 4 shows net biomass import results for Columbia River salmon. Finally, Table 5 summarizes our valuation results for salmon-related ecosystem services supported

Discussion and recommendations for further research

Although the Columbia Basin is highly studied and produces a wide array of data, the system is very complex and significant gaps remain in publicly available information for specific sections of the basin. We limited our assessment of ecosystem services to manageable portions of the system by: (i) considering the mainstem as the main driver of changes in production (versus the many tributaries); (ii) constraining the geographic scope primarily to Washington State; (iii) selecting specific

Conclusion

In this study we valued food production (commercial and tribal subsistence fishing), recreational fishing, and nutrient cycling services supplied by salmon populations in the Columbia River under a range of development scenarios. Although current management of the Columbia River includes many improvements for fish conservation, our results suggest that a re-prioritization of hydropower production would result in a loss of net economic benefits of $2.2 million/yr from commercial fishing, nearly $1

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on the project “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB): Natural Resource Accounting at country-level and across specified industrial sectors”, funded through an agreement between The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

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