5 Water Ecosystem Services Flashcards
Ecosystem
- Complex of living organisms (animals, microorganisms) and their nonliving surroundings (air, soil, minerals)
- Linked as a functional unit by interactions and processes that impact the status of both groups of components
Ecosystem Services (ES)
- Represent the direct and indirect benefits that humans obtain from ecosystems
- Synergies and tradeoffs in ES
Input → Process → Output → (feedback to input)
Classification of Ecosystem Services by MA (2005)
lecture 4 slide 78
- Provisioning services
- Regulating services
- Cultural services
- Supporting services
These ESs affect the constituents of well-being:
Note: constituent = a component part of something; unsur
ES
Provisioning services
- Food
- Fresh Water
- Wood and timber
- Fuel
ES
Regulating services
Benefits from the regulation of ecosystem processes.
- Climate regulation
- Flood regulation
- Disease regulation
- Water purification
ES
Cultural services
Non-material benefits from ecosystems through…
- Aesthetics
- Spiritual
- Educational
- Recreational
ES
Supporting services
Necessary for the production of all other ES They differ from provisioning, regulating, and cultural services in that their impacts on people are often indirect or occur over a very long time.
- Nutrient cycling
- Soil formation
- Primary production
Constituents of well-being
constituent = a component part of something
- Security
- Basic material of a good life
- Health
- Good social relations
These constituents lead to ‘Freedom of choice and action’ = Opportunity to be able to achieve what an individual values doing and being
Constituents of well-being:
Security
- Personal safety
- Secure resource access
- Security from disaster
Constituents of well-being:
Basic material of a good life
- Adequate livelihoods
- Sufficient nutritious food
- Shelter
- Access to goods
Constituents of well-being:
Health
- Strength
- Feeling well
- Access to clean air and water
Constituents of well-being:
Good social relations
- Social cohesion
- Mutual respect
- Ability to help others
Water and ESs
- Ecosystem Services are a major component of human well being
- In turn, human behaviour affects the provision of ecosystem services
- Some of the ES services might be offset by socioeconomic factors
- Provisioning and regulating with the largest effects on human well being
ES Tradeoff
see graph on # Lecture 5 slide 81
- Expanding provisioning services (e.g. Crop production) can have different effects on the regulating services
- „A major task (…) is to design studies (…) on how current production with often strongly negative effects on regulating services type A response, can be transfromed into type B or even type C“ (Elmquist, 2011, 6)
- Can you think of examples for type A and type C (type of agriculture, type of cropping, major policies…)?
Valuing ESs (just an overview)
- Due to its importance for policy making, the valuation of ecosystem services has been a popular research topic
- We observe a huge variation in estimates
- Different methodologies
- Different data
- Different regional circumstances
