Valoración económica ambiental del recurso vegetal del parque temático Yasuní Land, cantón Francisco de Orellana

Abstract

The Yasuní Land Park does not have studies focused on the valuation of environmental ecosystem services, causing misinformation and undervaluation of the park's plant resources. Therefore, the objective of this Curricular Integration Project was to value the plant resource of the Yasuní Land theme park economically and environmentally in Francisco de Orellana city. The methodology that was implemented had a deductive and inductive approach, the observation and survey technique was used to obtain relevant data from tourists; instruments such as the observation sheet and questionnaire were also applied. Subsequently, to evaluate the ecosystem services focused on the plant resource, a literature review was applied, and the contingent valuation method was selected for provisioning and regulating services, and the travel cost method for cultural services. This methodology determined that the park covers 59.10 ha and has a primary forest in a good state of conservation, with fine-textured, medium textured and coarse-textured soils that restrict productive activity in the sector. There are two levels of vegetation cover, with level two predominating in the study area, such as natural vegetation, shrub vegetation and natural forest. While the economic value of the vegetal resource for the ecosystem services (ES) of provisioning and regulation is US$ 21,817.90 and for the cultural ecosystem services it is US$ 61,324.24, giving a total economic value of US$ 82,868.76. In this context, we conclude that the ecosystem services of Yasuní Land Park are of great importance because it is necessary to conserve the vegetation in order to maintain a balance with nature and the resources it provides.