Ecosystem service
Ecosystem services are the various benefits that humans derive from healthy ecosystems. These ecosystems, when functioning well, offer such things as provision of food, natural pollination of crops, clean air and water, decomposition of wastes, or flood control. Ecosystem services are grouped into four broad categories of services. There are provisioning services, such as the production of food and water. Regulating services, such as the control of climate and disease. Supporting services, such as nutrient cycles and oxygen production. And finally there are cultural services, such as spiritual and recreational benefits.[1] Evaluations of ecosystem services may include assigning an economic value to them.
For example, estuarine and coastal ecosystems are marine ecosystems that perform the four categories of ecosystem services in several ways. Firstly, their provisioning services include marine resources and genetic resources. Secondly, their supporting services include nutrient cycling and primary production. Thirdly, their regulating services include climate regulation and flood control. Lastly, their cultural services include recreation and tourism.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) in the early 2000s has made this concept better known.[2]
Definition[edit]
Ecosystem services or eco-services are defined as the goods and services provided by ecosystems to humans.[3] Per the 2006 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), ecosystem services are "the benefits people obtain from ecosystems". The MA also delineated the four categories of ecosystem services into provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural.[2]
By 2010, there had evolved various working definitions and descriptions of ecosystem services in the literature.[4] To prevent double-counting in ecosystem services audits, for instance, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) replaced "Supporting Services" in the MA with "Habitat Services" and "ecosystem functions", defined as "a subset of the interactions between ecosystem structure and processes that underpin the capacity of an ecosystem to provide goods and services".[5]
While Gretchen Daily's original definition distinguished between ecosystem goods and ecosystem services, Robert Costanza and colleagues' later work and that of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment lumped all of these together as ecosystem services.[6][7]
History[edit]
While the notion of human dependence on Earth's ecosystems reaches to the start of Homo sapiens' existence, the term 'natural capital' was first coined by E. F. Schumacher in 1973 in his book Small is Beautiful.[85] Recognition of how ecosystems could provide complex services to humankind date back to at least Plato (c. 400 BC) who understood that deforestation could lead to soil erosion and the drying of springs.[86][87] Modern ideas of ecosystem services probably began when Marsh challenged in 1864 the idea that Earth's natural resources are unbounded by pointing out changes in soil fertility in the Mediterranean.[88] It was not until the late 1940s that three key authors—Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr,[89] William Vogt,[90] and Aldo Leopold[91]—promoted recognition of human dependence on the environment.
In 1956, Paul Sears drew attention to the critical role of the ecosystem in processing wastes and recycling nutrients.[92] In 1970, Paul Ehrlich and Rosa Weigert called attention to "ecological systems" in their environmental science textbook[93] and "the most subtle and dangerous threat to man's existence ... the potential destruction, by man's own activities, of those ecological systems upon which the very existence of the human species depends".
The term environmental services was introduced in a 1970 report of the Study of Critical Environmental Problems,[94] which listed services including insect pollination, fisheries, climate regulation and flood control. In following years, variations of the term were used, but eventually 'ecosystem services' became the standard in scientific literature.[95]
The ecosystem services concept has continued to expand and includes socio-economic and conservation objectives.[86]