Evaluation on the change characteristics of ecosystem service in Dhanbad district of Jharkhand,India based on land use change

Ecosystem services (ESs) simply refer to those services conferred by Mother Nature for the survival of her offspring living within. But the provision of ESs is continuously affected by human activity and related changes like transformations in land use and land cover. The present study has been initiated to evaluate the pattern of landscape transformation and its impact on ecosystem service, along with estimating the per capita availability of ESs based on remotely sensed data in the Dhanbad district, Jharkhand, India. The result shows that the total ecosystem service value (ESV) loss of the district was $2251959.76 during 1990–2020. The highest loss of ESV was recorded due to the conservation of agricultural land to built-up area ($15884988.50) and vegetation cover on agricultural land ($14451545.01), while the increased vegetation cover on other types of land helped the district to gain back some balance over the loss. But in a smaller scale study, 5 out of the 8 spatial units are facing negative change in ESV, and unfortunately, they are altogether inhabited by more than 85% of the district's total population. That means the loss of ESV is greater where it needs to be more as per population. Moreover, the per capita ESs in the district decreased by 68.48%, while among the spatial units in Dhanbad it decreased the most (89.60%), which is a serious cause for worry in the future. Therefore, this study can contribute to the process of decision-making, proposing ecological conservation and sustainable development plans for the region.