ESTIMATION OF LAND ASSET AND ECOSYSTEM VALUES IN BROWNFIELDS: SUSTAINABLE VALUATION METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

Abstract

The circular economy implementation demands following sustainability principles. Any degraded area, including brownfields and dumps, needs planning and assessment for primary reuse in future, whether it is green space, residential area or newly developed industrial center. Brownfields usually are associated with environmental pollution, surrounding contamination, and lost-to-economy abandoned resources. Responsible environmental and social governance principles include evaluation criteria of reclamation options. Ecosystem quality evaluation and land asset valuation are significant, either from the future use aspect, discount value or specific land use not always applicable for direct future benefit discern. The paper summarizes key novel aspects of brownfield recultivation as a tangible land asset integrating intangible ecosystem and cultural revitalization perspectives. The long-term recultivation strategies support reusing any resource, including landscape. The contemporary geographical approach reflects the landscape as a cluster of jointly interacting elements such as soil, biota, climate and human-made changes. In such an integrating framework, economic, social, environmental and cultural aspects are jointly included. Therefore, an estimation of regained land value, restored ecosystem services and recovered space for recreation, sports and culture can be performed. The authors have analyzed how to use set of tools such as land asset evaluation, discounted value and ecosystem services valuation for revitalized landfills that is novel approach.