DPSIR framework to analyze anthropogenic factors influence on provisioning and cultural ecosystem services of Sundarbans East Reserve Forest, Bangladesh

The Sundarbans, located in the southwest of Bangladesh, are one of the largest continuous blocks of mangrove forests worldwide. Sundarbans, however, is now under threat due to anthropogenic and nature-oriented factors. Therefore, Sundarbans ecosystem status assessments are an urgent need. In most cases, segregated ecosystem assessments simplify the complexity of these systems, which may lead to inappropriate ecosystem services supply estimations. This study aims to analyze anthropogenic factors that influence Sundarbans east reserve forest's provisioning and cultural ecosystem services using Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework. DPSIR framework help to analyze, identify and evaluate complex environmental problems of Sundarbans. The study found that major drivers such as increasing population and tourists; and decreasing freshwater flow from upstream, crop production and aquaculture area reduction from surrounding the forest exert pressure on Sundarbans. Cropping area, overexploitation and salinity were considered as pressure for Sundarbans which is largely caused by the drivers mentioned above. Consequently, the state of Sundarbans has changed, such as vegetation density, fish, crab, honey and wax production has declined, which can have a significant negative impact on revenue earning. Surprisingly, the revenue data from the forest department shows an increasing income from provisioning and cultural services, which has a positive effect. This is, of course, with a trade-off with decreasing provisioning services which contributed directly to the degradation of the Sundarbans ecosystem. Overall, the results revealed that if we could not solve the problems that originated from major drivers identified in this study, ecosystem services from Sundarbans we are getting will no longer be available in the near future. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.