Remote Sensing of Ecosystem Services: An Opportunity for Spatially Explicit Assessment

Ecosystem service is an emerging concept that grows to be a hot research area in ecology. Spatially explicit ecosystem service values are important for ecosystem service management. However, it is difficult to quantify ecosystem services. Remote sensing provides images covering Earth surface, which by nature are spatially explicit. Thus, remote sensing can be useful for quantitative assessment of ecosystem services. This paper reviews spatially explicit ecosystem service studies conducted in ecology and remote sensing in order to find out how remote sensing can be used for ecosystem service assessment. Several important areas considered include land cover, biodiversity, and carbon, water and soil related ecosystem services. We found that remote sensing can be used for ecosystem service assessment in three different ways: direct monitoring, indirect monitoring, and combined use with ecosystem models. Some plant and water related ecosystem services can be directly monitored by remote sensing. Most commonly, remote sensing can provide surrogate information on plant and soil characteristics in an ecosystem. For ecosystem process related ecosystem services, remote sensing can help measure spatially explicit parameters. We conclude that acquiring good in-situ measurements and selecting appropriate remote sensor data in terms of resolution are critical for accurate assessment of ecosystem services.