Ecosystem services and associated concepts

In this paper, we explore the practicality and limitations of the ecosystem services concept. The enthusiasm for the analytical investigation of services delivered by ecosystems is driven by the realisation that local, national and international policies are not protecting ecosystems and the full ra...

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Published inEnvironmetrics (London, Ont.) Vol. 22; no. 5; pp. 598 - 607
Main Authors Dick, J. McP, Smith, Rognvald I., Scott, E. Marian
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 01.08.2011
Subjects
Ecosystems
Environmental Change Network
Human
ISSE
Mathematical analysis
panarchy
Policies
Systems analysis
Temporal logic
Translating
world-systems analysis
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Summary:In this paper, we explore the practicality and limitations of the ecosystem services concept. The enthusiasm for the analytical investigation of services delivered by ecosystems is driven by the realisation that local, national and international policies are not protecting ecosystems and the full range of services they deliver to humans. We briefly review the history of the term and consider a range of analytical frameworks proposed to study ecosystem services. The problem of understanding ecosystems across varying spatial and temporal scales is a recurring theme and we argue that systems analysis such as world‐systems and panarchy analysis is useful in this context. Translating any one of these frameworks to an operational definition presents some challenges, which are briefly discussed in terms of measurement and quantification. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliography:ark:/67375/WNG-4TGP936D-9
istex:6F4CAA0BA7B72D988D8E2E1BFC9C06BFEAD3FD84
This article is published in Environmetrics as a special issue on Quantitative approaches to ecosystem service evaluation, edited by R. I. Smith, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UK; E. M. Scott, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Glasgow, UK; J. McP. Dick, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UK.
ArticleID:ENV1085
ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:1180-4009
1099-095X
1099-095X
DOI:10.1002/env.1085