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Ecosystem services or eco-services are defined as the goods and services provided by ecosystems to humans. [3] Per the 2006 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), ecosystem services are "the benefits people obtain from ecosystems". The MA also delineated the four categories of ecosystem services into provisioning, regulating, supporting, and ...
When estimating the effect of climate change on species' extinction risk, the report concluded that global warming of 2 °C (3.6 °F) over the preindustrial levels would threaten an estimated 5% of the Earth's species with extinction even in the absence of any other factors like land use change. If the warming reached 4.3 °C (7.7 °F), they ...
Loss of biodiversity results in the loss of natural capital that supplies ecosystem goods and services. Species today are being wiped out at a rate 100 to 1,000 times higher than baseline, and the rate of extinctions is increasing. This process destroys the resilience and adaptability of life on Earth. [63]
The ecosystem services provided by intact reefs, seagrasses, and mangroves are both highly valuable and mutually enhance each other. Coastal protection (storm/wave attenuation) maintains the structure of adjacent ecosystems, and associated ecosystem services, in an offshore-to-onshore direction.
This indirectly benefits society via the maintenance of ecosystem services and the reduction of severe wildfires. Ecosystem management is an approach to natural resource management that aims to ensure the long-term sustainability and persistence of an ecosystem's function and services while meeting socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs.
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.
Through cultural ecosystem services, biodiversity provides economic benefits in the form of recreation and tourism, while also benefitting human wellbeing. [49] [50] Biodiversity influences the potential of ecosystems to provide recreational services. [51] This includes outdoor recreation, such as hiking, hunting, fishing, and wildlife watching.
Wildlife management studies, research and lobbying by interest groups help designate times of the year when certain wildlife species can be legally hunted, allowing for surplus animals to be removed. In the United States, hunting season and bag limits are determined by guidelines set by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for waterfowl ...