Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem services are the multitude of benefits that nature provides to society.

Sources

• The National Wildlife Federation https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Understanding-Conservation/Ecosystem-Services

• USDA Forest Service https://www.fs.fed.us/ecosystemservices/About_ES/

Ecosystem Services

Wildlife is important to the heritage, culture, and heart of America, and we want to preserve it as a legacy for our children. Although you cannot put a value on all the ways the natural world enriches our lives, there are many tangible benefits to living in a world with strong and healthy ecosystems. We have a stronger economy, diverse food products, and advancements in medical research as a result of wildlife and natural ecosystems.

The value of nature to people has long been recognized, but in recent years, the concept of ecosystem services has been developed to describe these various benefits. An ecosystem service is any positive benefit that wildlife or ecosystems provide to people.

Multiple Choice

When we talk about ecosystem services, we are talking about how nature benefits humans.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

Which country provided a model for effective national park administration that the United States followed?

• Switzerland

• Canada

• South Africa

• Icelan

Multiple Choice

Which group of people first lived and worked in the Yosemite Valley?

• Miners and white settlers

• Native American tribes

• Ferdinand Hayden and his fellow geologists

• Park Rangers and California state authorities

Multiple Choice

Which of the following is not a part of the National Park Service’s activities today?

• Conserving the parks for future use

• Locating and extracting gold, oil, and other minerals on parklands

• Making the parks accessible to visitors

• Working with Native American groups to preserve the land and its history

Types of Ecosystem Services

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), a major UN-sponsored effort to analyze the impact of human actions on ecosystems and human well-being, identified four major categories of ecosystem services: provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services.

Provisioning Services: 

When people are asked to identify a service provided by nature, most think of food. Fruits, vegetables, trees, fish, and livestock are available to us as direct products of ecosystems. A provisioning service is any type of benefit to people that can be extracted from nature. Along with food, other types of provisioning services include drinking water, timber, wood fuel, natural gas, oils, plants that can be made into clothes and other materials, and medicinal benefits.

Regulating Services

Regulating Services: Ecosystems provide many of the basic services that make life possible for people. Plants clean air and filter water, bacteria decompose wastes, bees pollinate flowers, and tree roots hold soil in place to prevent erosion. All these processes work together to make ecosystems clean, sustainable, functional, and resilient to change. A regulating service is the benefit provided by ecosystem processes that moderate natural phenomena. Regulating services include pollination, decomposition, water purification, erosion and flood control, and carbon storage and climate regulation.

Cultural Services

Cultural Services: As we interact and alter nature, the natural world has in turn altered us. It has guided our cultural, intellectual, and social development by being a constant force present in our lives. The importance of ecosystems to the human mind can be traced back to the beginning of mankind with ancient civilizations drawing pictures of animals, plants, and weather patterns on cave walls. A cultural service is a non-material benefit that contributes to the development and cultural advancement of people, including how ecosystems play a role in local, national, and global cultures; the building of knowledge and the spreading of ideas; creativity born from interactions with nature (music, art, architecture); and recreation.

Supporting Services

Supporting Services: The natural world provides so many services, sometimes we overlook the most fundamental. Ecosystems themselves couldn't be sustained without the consistency of underlying natural processes, such as photosynthesis, nutrient cycling, the creation of soils, and the water cycle. These processes allow the Earth to sustain basic life forms, let alone whole ecosystems and people. Without supporting services, provisional, regulating, and cultural services wouldn't exist.

The Problem?

As population, income, and consumption levels increase, humans put more and more pressure on the natural environment to deliver these benefits. The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, prepared by a group of over 1300 international experts, found that 60 percent of ecosystem services assessed globally are either degraded or being used unsustainably. Seventy percent of the regulating and cultural services evaluated in the assessment are in decline. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment scientists predicted that ecosystem degradation could grow significantly worse in the first half of the 21st century, with important consequences to human well-being.

The Solution?

Regulations, land acquisitions, conservation easements, and tax incentives are some of the conservation approaches that aim to protect and conserve the Nation’s forests and grasslands. Over the past decade, advances in sustainable forest management and forest certification have complemented conservation objectives. Traditional conservation programs, however, may not be enough to safeguard natural landscapes and biodiversity, and traditional markets may not provide landowners with a sufficient economic incentive to own and sustainably manage forestland. To reverse the loss and degradation of ecosystem services, economic and financial motivations must include a conservation objective, and the value of ecosystem services needs to be incorporated into any decision-making.

Multiple Choice

Which type of service describes the way nature affects our minds and society?

• Provisioning

• Regulating

• Cultural

• Supporting

Multiple Choice

A ____________ service is any type of benefit to people that can be extracted from nature.

• Provisioning

• Regulating

• Cultural

• Supporting

Multiple Choice

Which services allow the Earth to sustain basic life forms, ecosystems, and people.

• Provisioning

• Regulating

• Cultural

• Supporting

Multiple Choice

This service provides recycling of materials, clean air and water, carbon storage and climate regulation.

• Provisioning

• Regulating

• Cultural

• Supporting

Multiple Choice

Which service includes bees pollinating plants?

• Provisioning

• Regulating

• Cultural

• Supporting

Multiple Choice

You go for a hike down the Rim Trail to get exercise and relax after a long week of school. Which service is nature providing to you?

• Provisioning

• Regulating

• Cultural

• Supporting

Multiple Choice

You go for an elk hunt and take a large bull. Your family is going to eat well for awhile! Which service are you primarily utilizing from nature?

• Provisioning

• Regulating

• Cultural

• Supporting

Multiple Choice

You go for a hike down the Rim Trail to get exercise and relax after a long week of school. Which service is nature providing to you?

• Provisioning

• Regulating

• Cultural

• Supporting