Ecosystem Services Flashcards
what are the four ecosystem services
- supporting services
- provisioning services
- regulating services
- cultural services
what is supporting services and example?
- services necessary for the production of all other services
- ex: nutrients, primary production, & soil formation
what is provisioning services and example?
- products obtained from ecosystems
- ex: food, fresh water, and genetic resources
what is regulating services and exmaple?
- benefits obtained from regulation of ecosystem services
- ex: climate regulation, pollination, water regulation, water purification
what is cultural services and example?
- nonmaterial benefits obtained from ecosystems
- ex: spiritual and religious recreation and ecotourism, educational, cultural heritage
ecosystem component interactions and boundaries
-well-defined ecosystem, strong interactions with components and weak interactions with boundaries
what is a useful ecosystem boundary and ex?
- the place where a number of discontinuities coincide
- ex: distribution of organisms, soil types, drainage basins, or depth in a water body
what are ecosystem services?
-the benefits people obtain from ecosystems
biodiversity & ecosystem services
- closely related
- diversity is a structural feature of ecosystems and variability is an element of biodiversity
- biodiversity is a source of ecosystem goods like food and genetic resources
- changes in biodiversity can influence the supply of ecosystem services
what is the global status of provision services?
- declining more than improving
- improving related to human food production
- improving under direct human control
what is the global status of regulating services?
-almost all declining
what is the global status of cultural services?
-declining or neutral
3 important characteristics of ecosystem services
- ecosystem variability
- resilience
- thresholds
what is variability?
-changes in stock or flows over time due to stochastic,intrinsic, and extrinsic factors
what is resilience?
- measure of the ability of a system to return to its original state after perturbation (large fire or severe drought)
- if recovery phase is short its considered more resilient than others
what is thresholds? what is it also known as?
-a dramatic, usually sudden (less than a decade) deviations from average system behavior
- Also known as regime shifts, catastrophic change,
or entering alternative stable state
- Often primed by a steady change in internal or
external conditions that increases a system’s
susceptibility to being triggered to enter an
alternative state (tipping point)
what is ecosystem intergrity?
-the maintenance of the community structure and function characteristic of a particular locale or deemed satisfactory to society
what is a food web?
-A series of organisms related by predator-prey and consumer-resource interactions
- The entirety of interrelated food chains in an
ecological community. - Depicts feeding connections (what-eats-what)
in an ecological community - limited representation of real ecosystems
what is trophic species?
-are functional groups of species that have same predators and prey in a food web
