Estimating the impacts of land use/land cover changes on Ecosystem Service Values: The case of the Andassa watershed in the Upper Blue Nile basin of Ethiopia
• Non-vegetation covers have expanded while the vegetation covers declined during the 1985–2015 periods, and the same trends will continue for the next three decades. • The observed and predicted LULC changes have affected the total and the specific ESV of the watershed. • LULC changes have also affected the average ESV of the land presented per hectare basis. Estimating the impacts of land use/land cover (LULC) changes in Ecosystem Service Values (ESV) is indispensable to provide public awareness about the status of ESV, and to help in policy-making processes. This study was intended to estimate the impacts of LULC changes on ESV in the Andassa watershed of the Upper Blue Nile basin over the last three decades (1985–2015), and to predict the ESV changes in 2045. The hybrid land use classification technique for classifying Landsat images, the Cellular-Automata Markov (CA-Markov) model for LULC prediction, and the modified ecosystem service value coefficients for estimating ESV were employed. Our findings revealed that there was a continues expansions of cultivated land and built-up area, and withdrawing of forest, shrubland and grassland during the 1985–2015 periods, which are expected to continue for the next three decades. Consequently, the total ESV of the watershed has declined from US$26.83 × 10 6 in 1985 to US$22.58 × 10 6 in 2000 and to US$21.00 × 10 6 in 2015 and is expected to further reduce to US$17.94 × 10 6 in 2030 and to US$15.25 × 10 6 in 2045. The impacts of LULC changes on the specific ecosystem services are also tremendous.