Dynamics of urbanization and its impact on Urban Ecosystem Services (UESs): A study of a medium size town of West Bengal, Eastern India

The continuous urban expansion changes the urban ecological landscape pattern and urban ecosystem functions that possess serious challenge before urban environmental and ecological management. In this context, assessing the relationship between rapid urban expansion and ecosystem services play an important role for the urban sustainability and development related to planning and policies. This study mainly focuses on the assessment of the dynamic nature of urbanization and its impact on urban ecosystem services through land use and land cover (LULC) changes of Old Malda Municipal town, Eastern India. The ecosystem service values (ESVs) are analyzed using Remote Sensing data and GIS techniques corresponding with the global Value Coefficient (VC) for four-time periods (1990, 2000, 2010 and 2017) to estimate total ecosystem service values (ESVt) and individual ecosystem service function change. Coefficient of Sensitivity (CS) is also applied to test the reliability of the estimated VC used as proxies for each LULC categories. The result of the study landscape reveals that the ecosystem service values (ESVs) decreased by 25% from US$ 1.33 million to US$ 1.07 million because of losing cropland and vegetation cover by 34% and 35% respectively during 1990-2017. In case of individual ecosystem service functions, regulating services increased by 12% since 1990-2017 with highest contributing services of water regulation (57%), water supply (22%) and waste treatment (8%) respectively while maximum decline is recorded in soil formation (33.33%) followed by climatic regulation (31.82%) and nutrient cycling (31.25%). The decline in total and some individual ESV in the study landscape requires for urgent measures to be taken to enhance the urban ecosystem sustainability through effective planning and policies.