Determination of certain ecosystem services values of forests in the Murat river basin

Forest ecosystems produce both finished or semi-finished products that have a market as well as services that do not have one. The aim of this PhD thesis is to determine the economic value of the carbon stored in the tree biomass of the forest ecosystems in the Murat River Basin, the oxygen they produce through photosynthesis, and the water that collects in the basin and reaches the Fırat River and then the Keban Dam. For this purpose, firstly, the growing stock and increment of forest ecosystems in the research area were calculated. The growing stock and increment values were converted to tree biomass carbon and oxygen. In order to estimate the economic value of water, the potential afforestation areas in the basin were identified using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHS) and the investment costs that the General Directorate of Forestry would incur if these areas were to be forested were computed. The total growing stock of the forest areas in the Murat River Basin as of 2017 was 9,249,306.796 m3, and the corresponding tree biomass was calculated as 9,187,928.29 t. While 4,648,843.35 tC of carbon was stored in this tree biomass in 2017, forest ecosystems produced a total of 11,157,224.03 tO of oxygen. According to the carbon prices published by the World Bank, the total cost of carbon in 2017 is 26,071,664.38 TL. According to the oxygen prices formed based on the market conditions in Turkey, the total cost of oxygen produced in the forest areas -that makes the research area- in 2017 is 16,082,253,270.04 TL. In addition to this, the General Directorate of Forestry should invest in forestation worthy of 6,989,646,343.7 TL for 1,085,828.1 ha area in 2017 in order to produce 8.1 billion m3 of water that gathers in the Murat River and reaches the Keban Dam in a year. Accordingly, the unit price of the water produced in the basin was calculated as 0.86 TL/m3. The price changes for the entire ecosystem services priced out within the scope of this PhD thesis from 2017 to 2021 are also provided on the basis of one year periods. Determining the economic value in forest ecosystems only based on the production of wood raw materials is against the green economy approach, which is very popular today. Forest ecosystems should be evaluated with all the goods and service outputs produced and valued accordingly.