ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

To the founding fathers of nature conservation, like John Muir in the USA and Jacque P. Thijsse
in the Netherlands, nature was beautiful and a source of inspiration. Since then, conservationists
have found it difficult to justify to politicians and the society at large, setting aside land just
because they find in beautiful. 

Since the nineteen sixties, conservationists came with many social and economic reasons why it
would be beneficial to set aside natural lands for conservation. They argued that nature would
benefit society and that society could use nature in a variety of ways.

Grosso modo, they devided the types of use in:

consumptive use and

non-consumptive use.

Consumptive use would imply the removal of a part of the resource, but in such a way that at
least some kind of interesting semi-natural ecosystem would remain. Forestry is the most
commonly known consumptive use and others include grazing of arid regions and hunting and
fishing.  

Of non-consumptive use, (eco-) tourism is very widely known, as well as watershed protection
for a reservoir. Also carbon sequestration would be among the non-consumptive use category.

As time moved on, new words were invented, ecosystem services being one of them.

In natural ecosystems, ecosystem services that take part of the resource, obviously have a great
impact on the exploited ecosystems, particularly in the case of forestry in ancient or virgin
forests in the tropics. In semi-natural or cultural landscapes, the impact is far less, as the use of
products of the ecosystems already has become part of that ecosystem in question. 

Another distinction that can be made is between direct and indirect benefits of ecosystem
services. In the case of forestry, the direct benefits are very obvious, the forest produces wood,
which can be used by the extractors for the construction of houses and furniture and fuel. In
general forestry serves them as a source of employment. Indirectly, the availability of wood in a
country may serve a wood-based industry, like paper, the production of plywood, furniture, etc.
Such economic benefits are considered in indirect economic benefits. 

Other indirect benefits of ecosystem services may come from ecotourism. While ecotourism may
generate very little income and employment near or in protected areas, they may create very
substantial benefits for the tourism sector as a whole, as eco-tourists use hotels and restaurants
elsewhere in the country, buy air tickets and use other transportation services, etc. 
One of the most commonly service associated with ecosystem services is the conservation of
water and soil. However, this is highly overvalued, as only very few areas are directly used as
watersheds for reservoirs or drinking water. 

In a broader scope, there are people who like to use the term ecosystem services in a very broad
worldwide view. They see the conservation or sequestration of CO2 and water as a planet wide
ecosystem services.

Probably the greatest problem with ecosystem services is that it is very difficult to attach the
broader benefits to the areas that produce the benefits. In other words, the billions of people that
harvest some kind of benefit from ecosystem services, simply never pay for those services. 

An ecosystem is a system whose members benefit from each other's participation via
symbiotic relationships (positive sum relationships). It is a term that originated from
biology, and refers to self-sustaining systems.

The bumblebee hive is an example of an ecosystem, highlighted in Bernd Heinrich's book,

Bumblebee Economics. The bumblebees' hive is a living system with one goal, to gather
enough energy to ensure the survival of the bumblebee's genetic information. Bumblebees
(unlike most other species) live in colonies and depend on each other for survival.
Bumblebees extract pollen for protein and nectar for their sole source of energy from
neighboring plants. Plants, in turn, rely on bumblebees to inadvertently brush pollen from
one plant to another, to enable the plants' reproduction process to begin. The relationship
between the bumblebee and the plant is symbiotic, as each benefits from each other's
participation. The bumblebee hive goes through a life cycle, through the year. Entering the
fall the queen bee lays eggs that are fed a different diet. These eggs turn into virgin queens
and males. When the frost hits, the remaining worker bees die as does the queen, the virgin
queens and males fly off, mate, the males die and the inseminated queens seek shelter
through the winter. The process then begins again.

As it applies to business, an ecosystem can be viewed as a system where the relationships

established across different industries become mutually beneficial, self-sustaining and
(somewhat) closed. This is clearly the case for Silicon Valley with the entrepreneurial
industry, the venture capital industry needed to fund the entrepreneurial industry, and
Stanford University, supplying the human capital needed to develop innovative/creative
ideas and technologies. The goal of this ecosystem is to generate entrepreneurial ventures.
Once an ecosystem is established, and is able to take first-mover advantage, it becomes
very difficult for other regions to emulate. The region exhibits network effects and is able to
establish lock-in since the switching costs associated with moving to another region are
prohibitive. The collective costs of many moving out of the region (i.e. if another region
tried to incentivize a large move) would be prohibitive. Thus current members have a clear
incentive to remain, and new would-be entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and students
interested in this industry have a significant incentive to relocate to this region.

an ecosystem may be natural (like forest, lake, ocean etc) or man-made (such as an aquarium, a crop field etc),
temporary (like a rainfed pond) or permanent (like a lake, forest, etc), aquatic (such as pond, ocean etc) or terrestrial
(like grassland, forest, etc).
Ecosystem dynamics
The apparent stillness of a forest belies the ecosystem dynamics at work behind the scenes in a
series of interrelated and ongoing processes related to:

 energy input;
 circulation of the elements essential to life: carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, etc. (biogeochemical cycles);
 water circulation.

All living organisms need energy to maintain their vital functions and grow. However, the
energy in an ecosystem cannot be recycled; it must be constantly renewed.

Energy can only enter an ecosystem through plants. Moreover, barely 1 to 3% of the light that
reaches the plants is absorbed via photosynthesis. The rest is lost in the form of heat.

Plants use light to manufacture their own food and tissues (leaves, wood, fruits, etc.). They are
called producers or autotrophs: they live on the most basic inorganic (not living) elements, such
as carbon dioxide and water, and not by consuming other living organisms.

Every living organism that dwells in an ecosystem depends entirely on the photosynthetic
process carried out by plants. The more vigorous its plants, the more dynamic an ecosystem will
be.

All animals, insects and micro-organisms are directly or indirectly fed by plants and are called
consumers or heterotrophs. For example, a deer eats leaves from a tree and produces waste,
which in turn feeds the decomposers. The hunter who eats the deer benefits from the meat that
his prey produced from plants. Organic matter thus circulates in the food chain, is transformed,
and is ultimately decomposed into basic elements (CO2, water, nitrogen, etc.) that can once
again be assimilated by plants.
Throughout this process, the energy that is incorporated by plants into the biomass is liberated
through the respiration of autotrophs and heterotrophs, and gradually dissipates as heat.

Water is essential for the circulation of elements through an ecosystem and is one of the
necessary components of photosynthesis. Moreover, living organisms are generally made up of
70 to 90% of water.

Ecosystem ecology is the integrated study of biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems and
their interactions within an ecosystem framework. This science examines how ecosystems work
and relates this to their components such as chemicals, bedrock, soil, plants, and animals.

Ecosystem ecology examines physical and biological structures and examines how these
ecosystem characteristics interact with each other. Ultimately, this helps us understand how to
maintain high quality water and economically viable commodity production. A major focus of
ecosystem ecology is on functional processes, ecological mechanisms that maintain the structure
and services produced by ecosystems. These include primary productivity (production of
biomass), decomposition, and trophic interactions.

Studies of ecosystem function have greatly improved human understanding of sustainable

production of forage, fiber, fuel, and provision of water. Functional processes are mediated by
regional-to-local level climate, disturbance, and management. Thus ecosystem ecology provides
a powerful framework for identifying ecological mechanisms that interact with global
environmental problems, especially global warming and degradation of surface water.

This example demonstrates several important aspects of ecosystems:

1. Ecosystem boundaries are often nebulous and may fluctuate in time

2. Organisms within ecosystems are dependent on ecosystem level biological and physical
processes
3. Adjacent ecosystems closely interact and often are interdependent for maintenance of
community structure and functional processes that maintain productivity and biodiversity

These characteristics also introduce practical problems into natural resource management. Who
will manage which ecosystem? Will timber cutting in the forest degrade recreational fishing in
the stream? These questions are difficult for land managers to address while the boundary
between ecosystems remains unclear; even though decisions in one ecosystem will affect the
other. We need better understanding of the interactions and interdependencies of these
ecosystems and the processes that maintain them before we can begin to address these questions.

Ecosystem ecology is an inherently interdisciplinary field of study. An individual ecosystem is

composed of populations of organisms, interacting within communities, and contributing to the
cycling of nutrients and the flow of energy. The ecosystem is the principle unit of study in
ecosystem ecology.

Population, community, and physiological ecology provide many of the underlying biological
mechanisms influencing ecosystems and the processes they maintain. Cycling of energy and
matter at the ecosystem level are often examined in ecosystem ecology, but, as a whole, this
science is defined more by subject matter than by scale. Ecosystem ecology approaches
organisms and abiotic pools of energy and nutrients as an integrated system which distinguishes
it from associated sciences such as biogeochemistry.[1]

Biogeochemistry and hydrology focus on several fundamental ecosystem processes such as

biologically mediated chemical cycling of nutrients and physical-biological cycling of water.
Ecosystem ecology forms the mechanistic basis for regional or global processes encompassed by
landscape-to-regional h ydrology, global biogeochemistry, and earth system science.[1]