Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem Services
Have you ever heard of human services? Human services are the ways we meet basic human health, welfare, and other societal needs as a community. Similarly to how humans have our human services, nature, and ecosystems also have their own positive and beneficial services, called ecosystem services.
Ecosystem services are the direct and indirect ways that ecosystems contribute and provide for human well-being and quality of life. One small, but insanely important, example of an ecosystem hard at work directly impacting us is our food and water. Another, much larger, example is how ecosystems are tirelessly working to regulate the climate around us. Ecosystem services have such a powerful influence, they can even impact cultural aspects of our lives and societies. When you really think about it, these ecosystem services are found seemingly everywhere, so much so that they are often categorized further into four separate groups: provisional services, regulating services, cultural services, and supporting services.
Provisional Services
Provisional services are the physical and tangible goods that people can harvest from the environment. From fish to fruits, these services are available by nature and derive directly from the ecosystem.
Regulating Services
Regulating services are the services that occur in an ecosystem that lead to benefits like climate regulation, flood management, and water filtration. One of these major services is happening right now, as you read this. Take a deep breath in as plants clean and filter the air around us, quite literally allowing us our next breath.
Cultural Services
When you interact with nature, nature interacts with you. Throughout human history, humans have had a relationship with nature and have woven ecosystems into our cultures and traditions. These non-material services have left a long-lasting impact on societal developments and advancements that can be seen very obviously in our story as humans.
Supporting Services
Behind the scenes of the more obvious ecosystem services lies the supporting services like the nutrient cycle, photosynthesis, soil formation, and habitat provision for biodiversity. Without these building block processes, the three other ecosystem services would not be able to function.
Not only are these four ecosystem services individually impressive, but the ways in which they serve each other are almost unbelievable. Take one of the most important provisional services for humans: food. Now, 75% of the world’s flowering plants and about 35% of the world’s food crops depend on animal pollinators to produce, a regulating ecosystem service. That adds up to one out of every three bites of food you eat. Another example is how plants would perish without photosynthesis, a supporting service, meaning no more oxygen production and essentially no more Earth as we know it, affecting every type of service. The ecosystem services rely on each other to provide and exchange these services as much as we humans depend on them to provide for us, yet we are severely lacking on our end of the exchange. These services need us to provide more services for them, just as much as we need them to continue doing what they’re doing. So, the next time you take a deep breath of fresh air outside, think just how much is going on in the ecosystem around you for you to take that breath, and remember what you do to help these ecosystem services around you matters to you, just as much as it matters to them.
Written by Anabelle Daly