Ecosystem service

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.

Thirdly, their regulating services include carbon sequestration (which helps with climate change mitigation) and flood control.

In fact, some services directly affect the livelihood of neighboring human populations (such as fresh water, food or aesthetic value, etc.)

The results of this study also indicate that the proportion of chaparral and oak-woodland habitat available for wild bees within 1–2 km of a farm can stabilize and enhance the provision of pollination services.

Coastal and estuarine ecosystems act as buffer zones against natural hazards and environmental disturbances, such as floods, cyclones, tidal surges and storms.

Supporting services of coastal ecosystems include nutrient cycling, biologically mediated habitats and primary production.

Cultural services of coastal ecosystems include inspirational aspects, recreation and tourism, science and education.

Salt marshes, mangroves and beaches also support a diversity of plants, animals and insects crucial to the food chain.

Coasts also create essential material for organisms to live by, including estuaries, wetland, seagrass, coral reefs, and mangroves.

Although environmental awareness is rapidly improving in our contemporary world, ecosystem capital and its flow are still poorly understood, threats continue to impose, and we suffer from the so-called 'tragedy of the commons'.

[42] Many efforts to inform decision-makers of current versus future costs and benefits now involve organizing and translating scientific knowledge to economics, which articulate the consequences of our choices in comparable units of impact on human well-being.

The economic valuation of ecosystem services also involves social communication and information, areas that remain particularly challenging and are the focus of many researchers.

[44] In general, the idea is that although individuals make decisions for any variety of reasons, trends reveal the aggregated preferences of a society, from which the economic value of services can be inferred and assigned.

[53] Although monetary pricing continues with respect to the valuation of ecosystem services, the challenges in policy implementation and management are significant and considerable.

Considering options must balance present and future human needs, and decision-makers must frequently work from valid but incomplete information.

Existing legal policies are often considered insufficient since they typically pertain to human health-based standards that are mismatched with necessary means to protect ecosystem health and services.

In some cases, banks for handling such credits have been established and conservation companies have even gone public on stock exchanges, defining an evermore parallel link with economic endeavors and opportunities for tying into social perceptions.

[62] In addition, concerns for such global transactions include inconsistent compensation for services or resources sacrificed elsewhere and misconceived warrants for irresponsible use.

There is also increasing recognition that some shellfish species may impact or control many ecological processes; so much so that they are included on the list of "ecosystem engineers"—organisms that physically, biologically or chemically modify the environment around them in ways that influence the health of other organisms.

They all involve the management of ecosystems and their services to reduce the vulnerability of human communities to the impacts of climate change.

[73][74] Ecosystem services decisions require making complex choices at the intersection of ecology, technology, society, and the economy.

[75] One analytical study modeled the stakeholders as agents to support water resource management decisions in the Middle Rio Grande basin of New Mexico.

[77] A third study used a Bayesian decision support system to both model the uncertainty in the scientific information Bayes Nets and to assist collecting and fusing the input from stakeholders.

This study was about siting wave energy devices off the Oregon Coast, but presents a general method for managing uncertain spatial science and stakeholder information in a decision making environment.

[79] In Baltic countries scientists, nature conservationists and local authorities are implementing integrated planning approach for grassland ecosystems.

It will look holistically at the processes in the countryside and help to find best grassland management solutions by taking into account both natural and socioeconomic factors of the particular site.

[81] 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.

[82] 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.

[85][page needed] It was not until the late 1940s that three key authors—Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr,[86] William Vogt,[87] and Aldo Leopold[88]—promoted recognition of human dependence on the environment.

[89] In 1970, Paul Ehrlich and Rosa Weigert called attention to "ecological systems" in their environmental science textbook[90] 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".