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An example of an ecosystem service is pollination, here by a honey bee on avocado crop.. Ecosystem services are the various benefits that humans derive from ecosystems.The interconnected living and non-living components of the natural environment offer benefits such as pollination of crops, clean air and water, decomposition of wastes, and flood control.
Ecological goods and services (EG&S) are the economical benefits (goods and services) arising from the ecological functions of ecosystems. Such benefits accrue to all living organisms, including animals and plants, rather than to humans alone. However, there is a growing recognition of the importance to society that ecological goods and ...
Ecosystem services are ecologically mediated functional processes essential to sustaining healthy human societies. [6] Water provision and filtration, production of biomass in forestry, agriculture, and fisheries, and removal of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) from the atmosphere are examples of ecosystem services essential to public health and economic opportunity.
Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can end up doing things very differently simply because they have different pools of species present. [11]: 321 The introduction of non-native species can cause substantial shifts in ecosystem function. [12]
Linnaeus presented early ideas found in modern aspects to human ecology, including the balance of nature while highlighting the importance of ecological functions (ecosystem services or natural capital in modern terms): "In exchange for performing its function satisfactorily, nature provided a species with the necessaries of life" [10]: 66 The ...
Functional diversity is widely considered to be "the value and the range of those species and organismal traits that influence ecosystem functioning" [3] In this sense, the use of the term "function" may apply to individuals, populations, communities, trophic levels, or evolutionary process (i.e. considering the function of adaptations). [3]
Social-ecological systems are based on the concept that humans are a part of—not separate from—nature. [8] This concept, which holds that the delineation between social systems and natural systems is arbitrary and artificial, was first put forth by Berkes and Folke, [9] and its theory was further developed by Berkes et al. [10] More recent research into social-ecological system theory has ...
The basic conceptualization of nature from the perspective of environmental economics is that manufactured capital can be used as a substitute for natural capital. [15] The definition of PES provided by environmental economics is the most popular: a voluntary transaction between a service buyer and service seller that takes place on the condition that either a specific ecosystem service is ...