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Ecosystem Services

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Ecological Systems

Abstract

Ecosystem services are essential to sustaining and fulfilling human life, and yet their supply is seriously threatened by the intensification of human impacts on the environment. Over the past decade, efforts to value and protect ecosystem services have been promoted by many as the last best hope for making conservation mainstream – attractive and commonplace worldwide. In theory, if institutions recognize the values of nature, then we can greatly enhance investments in conservation and foster human well-being at the same time. In practice, scientific and policy communities have not yet developed the scientific basis or the policy and finance mechanisms for integrating natural capital into resource and land-use decisions on a large scale.

This chapter was originally published as part of the Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology edited by Robert A. Meyers. DOI:10.1007/978-1-4419-0851-3

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Abbreviations

Ecosystem services:

The wide array of benefits that ecosystems, and their biodiversity, confer on humanity.

Marginal value:

The economic value of the next incremental unit of something. In this context, marginal values are those associated with managing the next small unit of an ecosystem in a particular way (e.g., preserving, rather than clearing, the next unit of forest). They can also be the partial contribution of natural capital to a final good that is produced with other inputs. For example, the marginal value of irrigation water for crop production is the value of the incremental crop yield that can be attributed to irrigation, rather than to labor, fertilizer, and other inputs.

Natural capital:

Here we focus on living, renewable forms of natural capital, which constitute a stock – of an ecosystem and the biota that makes it up – that generates a flow of ecosystem services. For example, a forest constitutes a stock that generates a flow of timber, carbon sequestration, water quality, biodiversity, serenity, and other benefits, depending upon how it is managed. (Fossil fuels and other minerals constitute nonliving natural capital, which is generally nonrenewable on time scales of interest to society.)

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Natural Capital Project, Department of Biology and Woods Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305-5020, USA

    Heather Tallis, Anne Guerry & Gretchen C. Daily

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Y2E2 Building, 473 Via Ortega, Room 227C, Stanford, CA, 94305-5020, USA

    Gretchen C. Daily

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  1. Heather Tallis
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Correspondence to Heather Tallis .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Environmental Systems Analysis Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, 6700 AA, Netherlands

    Rik Leemans

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Tallis, H., Guerry, A., Daily, G.C. (2013). Ecosystem Services. In: Leemans, R. (eds) Ecological Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5755-8_6

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