Abstract: Habitat equivalency analysis (HEA) is one of the methods commonly used by U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in natural resources da
mage assessment, but rarely applied in China. Based on the theory of HEA and the assessment practices of domestic oil spill incidents, a modification on the HEA was made in this paper, and applied to calculate the habitat value in oil spill incidents. According to the data collected from an oil spill incident in China, the modified HEA was applied in a case study to scale the compensatory-restoration. By introducing the ecological service equivalent factor to transfer various habitats, it was achieved to value of the injured habitats in ecological damage assessment of oil spill incident.

Key words: habitat equivalency analysis, oil spill, ecological damage assessment, habitat value