Lecture 1 -- Ecosystem Services Flashcards
- What is economics?
allocation of scarce resources among desirable ends
- Everything the economy produces requires __________ and ____________, both of which are provided by nature.
raw materials & Energy
- What are the four categories of ecosystem goods and services? Given a list of ecosystem goods and services, be able to determine their category.
SPRC
Supporting, Provisioning (GOODS), Regulating, Cultural
S- Nutrient cycling, primary production
P- Food, freshwater, wood
R-Climate, Floods, Diseases, Water Purity
C- Aesthetic, Spiritual, Educationals
- What’s the difference between ecosystem goods and services? Which can we use up as fast as we want?
Good- Raw materials, essential to all economic input. We can use as fast as we like
Services-
- Provide some examples of regulation services.
Water Flow Disturbance/Floods Erosion Control Climate Regulation Carbon
- Provide some examples of provisioning services (also known as goods provided by ecosystems).
Food, Fuel, Fiber, Drinking Water, Wood, Energy
Harvest of the ecosystem structure
- Provide some examples of cultural services.
Cultural Heritage
Aesthetic
Recreation/tourism
Educational
- What are supporting services and how do they relate to the other types of services?
Nutrient Cycling, Water Cycling, Primary Production, Habitat, Genetic Diversity, BIODIVERSITY
- What do we mean that ecosystem goods have a market price signal, but ecosystem services generally don’t? How does this affect the way that we manage land and natural resources?
Goods can be sold in a market so there is supply and demand and price.
Services are “non-market” goods, can’t be owned. There is no price signal to indicate scarcity
- Consider the national forest lands that were the subject of The Hidden Forest, and the old traditional and “new forestry” policies that govern how that land was managed and harvested. Compare and contrast the old and new policies in terms of economics and ecosystem goods/services.
Old Policy - Old trees are useless and need to be cut down to make room for more new trees to grow!
New Policy- Old growth forests are valuable and should be maintained. “Tree Farms” are not the way to go
- Compare/contrast ecosystem goods and services in terms of general patterns in how they are provided by ecosystems, who owns them, who benefits from them, how they are represented in economies, etc.
Goods - Harvested from ecosystem structure, can be privately owned, owners benefit from sale in the market.
Services - Provided by the ecosystem structure, land can be owned but services are “non-market” goods that can’t be sold (represented in the economy w/ price signal to indicate scarcity)
- Ecosystem structure can be owned by individuals (structure is the physical/tangible parts of ecosystems, which is where we get the goods or raw materials to fuel our economy such as land, trees, fish, minerals, plants, animals, food, etc.). Ecosystem processes (e.g. natural river flow regime, water infiltration, oxygen production, air/water filtration, soil formation, N-cycling, food web dynamics…) generally can’t be owned, and they drive the ecosystem services we depend on (e.g. flood risk reduction, clean air, clean dependable drinking water, fertile soil…). However ecosystem processes are affected by the structure (e.g. a healthy forest structure slows down the rainfall and gives it a chance to infiltrate in the ground, preventing dangerously high peak flows and sediment downstream). This relationship sets up a potential conflict between those who own and extract the goods (e.g. cut down the forest) and those who depend on the ecosystem services provided by those goods (e.g. downstream communities that are at risk from floods).
This is its own answer! Understand this relationship between:
Ecosystem goods v services
Ecosystem Structure v processes
- Given the above set up ( trade-offs between private property/goods and public benefit/services), come up with some ways in which you (if you were all powerful) would design an economic system that allows for the extraction of goods and private profit (economic production), while also maintaining the provision of necessary ecosystem services to the broader community.
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