Ecosystem Services

Trista M Patterson, Pacific Northwest Research Station Sitka, Alaska, USA

Published online: December 2011

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0021902

Abstract

Ecosystem services represent all the things that functioning ecosystems do for people that people generally do not have to pay for. Examples include a forested hillside filtering water and retaining topsoil/sediments, how trees remove carbon from the atmosphere, or how a mangrove buffers surrounding low‐lying lands from wave action and storm surge. When ecosystem services are lost, the human‐made substitutes (such as a water filtration plant, erosion retaining walls, etc.) are often costly, and costly to maintain. Environmental management decisions are increasingly incorporating estimates of ecosystem service values as part of the cost–benefit evaluations. The intent of many ecosystem service efforts are to internalise ecosystem contributions into decision‐making, thus stemming ecosystem service loss. However, accomplishing this requires not only stemming the loss of ecosystem services, but also addressing the increasing human demands for them.

Key Concepts:

  • Ecosystem services are those processes of ecosystems that support (directly or indirectly) human well‐being.

  • The concept of ecosystem services is of interest to economists, ecologists and many other disciplines for its ability to create cross‐discipline dialog.

  • Ecosystem services provide valuable social benefits, which are often not accounted in standard economic currencies. Left unaccounted, they are vulnerable to loss. Numerous tools are emerging to visualise this value, supporting protection and/or restoration of ecosystem services.

  • Much of the current focus on ecosystem service work bases its emphasis on the supply of ecosystem services. For this concept to support sustainability objectives however, growing demands for ecosystem services must be addressed through changes in behaviour, technology, governance and design.

Keywords: ecosystem services; ecosystem service markets; public goods; ecosystem function

Figure 1.

Broad categories of ecosystem services. Reproduced with permission from Patterson and Coelho ; MEA .
Figure 2.

Payment for Ecosystem Service (PES) systems are designed to internalise otherwise external costs. The three columns illustrate private benefits (above the bar) and public costs (below the bar) as measured for business as usual (left column), conservation only strategy (middle column), and conservation paired with PES (right column). It is anticipated that a land manager will choose the option heanticipates will deliver the highest private benefit. In the third column, PES is proposed to turn what would be a public cost into a private benefit. Reproduced with permission from Patterson and Coelho ; Engel et al..

close

References

Beier C, Patterson T and Chapin S (2008) Ecosystem services and emergent vulnerability in managed ecosystems: a geospatial decision‐support tool. Ecosystems 11(6): 923–938.

Boyd J and Banzhaf S (2007) What are ecosystem services? The need for standardized environmental accounting units. Ecological Economics 63: 616–626.

Brouwer R (2000) Environmental value transfer: state of the art and future prospects. Ecological Economics 32: 137–152.

Collins S and Larry E (2007) Caring for our natural assets: an ecosystem services perspective. USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, General technical report, PNW‐GTR‐733.

Costanza R (2008) Ecosystem services: multiple classification systems are needed. Biological Conservation 141: 350–352.

Costanza R, d'Arge R, de Groot R et al. (1997) The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature 387: 253–260.

Daily GC (1997) Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Daly HE (1977) Steady‐state economics. In: Cahn MA and O'Brien R (eds) Thinking about the Environment: Readings on Politics, Property, and the Physical World, pp. 250–255. New York, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.

Daly H (1991) Steady‐State Economics: Second Edition with New Essays. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Daly H (1996) Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Deutsch L, Folke C and Skanberg K (2003) The critical natural capital of ecosystem performance as insurance for human well‐being. Ecological Economics 44: 205–217.

Ehrlich PR, Ehrlich AH and Holdren JP (1977) Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.

Ehrlich PR and Ehrlich AH (1981) Extinction: The Causes & Consequences of the Disappearance of Species. New York, NY: Random House.

Ehrlich PR and Ehrlich AH (1990) The Population Explosion. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.

Engel S, Pagiola S and Wunder S (2008) Designing payments for environmental services in theory and practice: an overview of the issues. Ecological Economics 65: 663–674.

Fisher B and Turner RK (2008) Ecosystem services: classification for valuation. Biological Conservation 141: 1167–1169.

de Groot RS, Wilson MA and Boumans RM (2002) A typology for the classification, description and valuation of ecosystem functions, goods and services. Ecological Economics 41: 393–408.

Haberl H, Erb KH, Krausmann F et al. (2007) Quantifying and mapping the human appropriation of net primary production in earth's terrestrial systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 12942–12947.

Hardin G (1968) The tragedy of the commons. Science 162: 1243–1248.

Holdren JP and Ehrlich PR (1974) The human population and the global environment. American Scientist 62: 282–292.

Howarth RB and Wilson MA (2006) A theoretical approach to deliberative valuation: aggregation by mutual consent. Land Economics 82: 1–16.

Kline JD, Mazotta M and Patterson T (2009) Toward a rational exuberance for ecosystem services markets. Journal of Forestry June: 204–212.

Krutilla JV (1967) Conservation reconsidered. American Economic Review 57: 777–786.

MEA (2005) Ecosystems and Human Well‐being: Current State and Trends. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Ostrom E (1990) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Patterson T and Coelho D (2009) Ecosystem services: foundations, opportunities, and challenges for the forest products sector. Journal of Forest Ecology and Management 257(8): 1637–1646.

SCEP (Study of Critical Environmental Problems) (1970) Man's Impact on the Global Environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Schumacher EF (1973) Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York, NY: Harper and Row.

Spash CL (2007) Deliberative monetary valuation (DMV): issues in combining economic and political processes to value environmental change. Ecological Economics 63: 690–699.

Spash CL and Vatn A (2006) Transferring environmental value estimates: issues and alternatives. Ecological Economics 60: 379–388.

US EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) (2006) Ecological Benefits Assessment Strategic Plan, EPA‐240‐R‐06‐001. Office of the Administrator, Washington, DC. http://www.epa.gov/economics/ (accessed 5/12/2008).

Westman WE (1977) How much are nature's services worth? Science 197: 960–964.

Wilson MA and Carpenter SR (1999) Economic valuation of freshwater ecosystem services in the United States: 1971–1997. Ecological Applications 9: 772–783.

Wunder S (2005) Payments for Environmental Services: Some Nuts and Bolts. CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 42, Center for International Forestry Research, Jakarta.

Wunder S (2007) The efficiency of payments for environmental services in tropical conservation. Conservation Biology 21: 48–58.

Further Reading

ten Brink P (ed.) (2010) The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity in National and International Policy Making. London: Earthscan, 390p.

EUSTAFOR and Patterson T (2011) Ecosystem Services in European State Forests. Brussels: European State Forest Association, 40p.

Kumar P (ed.) (2010) The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: Ecological and Economic Foundations. London: Earthscan, 456p.

Sukhdev P, Wittmer H, Nesshöver C et al. (2011) The TEEB Report Series: The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. United Nations Environment Program, Geneva. Available for download from the TEEB website http://www.teebweb.org/InformationMaterial/TEEBReports/tabid/1278/Default.aspx.

Related Sub-Topics:

Human Impacts | Biomes and Ecosystems | Conservation and Management
Contact Editor close
Submit a note to the editor about this article by filling in the form below.

* Required Field

Article Title: Ecosystem Services
 
How to Cite close
Patterson, Trista M(Dec 2011) Ecosystem Services. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0021902]