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A Total Forest Management Plan and Wildland Management Decision Support System
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Ecological Services - The Processes for People

These interactions and feedbacks are so complex that they nearly defy human understanding.
N.R. French, 1972

In a major article in Bioscience (vol 47:747-757) the global ecological life support system, i.e., ecological services and natural capital, were analyzed. The phrases and concepts were mixed and cause and effect were often disputable but the analysis suggested that world ecological services were worth $2.9 trillion annually. The actual amounts hardly seem relevant. The list is important for it might become the basis for a consequence table, one depicting the changes in system processes and thus outputs of systems when modified by some process or form.

In another paper Costanza, R. R. d'Arget, de Groot, S. Farber, M. Grasso, B Hannon, K. Limburg, S. Naeem, R.V. O'Neill, J. Paruelo, R.G. Raskin, P. Sutton, and M. van den Belt. 1997. The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature 387 (6230) is was reported that the ecological services were of 17 types in 16 biomes. The estimate was $16-54 trillion and averaged $33 trillion per year.

They said, for comparison, the gross "global national" product (for all of the world's countries) was $18 trillion per year.

The biome analyses required summing of (the services in each biome/unit area) x (area of each biome)

The 17 services highlighted in this paper (shown here) can be compared to those listed below. The services are changing flows of matter or material, energy, and information:

1. Gas regulation
2. Climate regulation
3. Disturrbance regulation
4. Water regulation
5. Water supply
6. Erosion control and sediment retention
7. Soil formation
8. Nutrient cycling
9. Waste treatment
10. Pollination
11. Biological control
12. Refugia
13. Food production
14. Raw material supply
15. Genetic resource supply
16. Recreation
17. Cultural

Psychologists say people are reluctant to change. We may need a strong perception of dire consequences to change...but perhaps a vision of something so "right" may be as motivating for people to tend their environment well.

Perhaps the following list may be re-organized and it may provide one basis for work to produce a computer program(s) that will show the likely changes within wildlands before each decision to change the environment is made.

Ecological services are difficult to discuss for "services" sounds positive and often there are negatives effects ... which are human value judgements and not "natural" or "ecological" or bio-physical. For example, animals disperse seeds but they aggregate others (into caches). They eat some but their gnawing or passage through their digestive system allows others to germinate. Thus they increase some, decrease others. They change the life form of some plants by their grazing, good in some situations for some forms of life, harmful for others. They propagate and influence mycorrhizae , beneficial to some plants (which may be competitors to others of great value.

"Processes" from general systems theory, is a better word to use than "services."

There are commodities provided such as building material, fuel, and other forest products.They once contributed to coal and fossil energy buildups and some are believed to continue to do so. Whether this can be called "services" needs to be discussed.

1. Protecting downstream watershed areas
2. Holding soil in place
3. Generating and developing soils
4. Generating and maintaining fertile soils
5. Stabilizing soils (26 billion tons of top soil are lost per year)
6. Protecting soil from rainfall impact
7. Regulating the hydrologic cycle
8. Maintaining gases of the atmosphere
9. Modifying the climate in desired ways
10. Cycling nutrients and wastes
11. Detoxifying waster products
12. Controlling agricultural and forest pests
13. Pollinating plants
14. Preserving genetic opportunities
15. Producing and cleaning quality waters
16. Storing water
17. Providing spaces for fauna
18. Producing oxygen
19. Providing windbreaks
20. Providing privacy (visual and audile protection by separation and buffers)
21. Provide intangible benefits
22. Enhancing spiritual and religious functions; opportunities for mental and physical regeneration of people
23. Enriching the esthetic opportunities for people
24. Providing the grounds for research-based answers
25. Sequestering carbon
26. Providing flexibility and adaptability in the face of long-term environmental change
27. Capturing sunlight
28. Building phytomass
29. Decomposing wastes
30. Redistributing water
31. Purifying the air (supporting a favorable atmosphere)
32. Creating genetic materials
33. Providing pharmaceuticals
34. Buffering the effects of floods, fire, and pestilence
35. Modifying disease threats (plus and minus as in so many other "services")
36. Stabilizing the landscape structure (forests as more stable and long-term)
37. Providing a refuge for some plants and animals
38. Providing extra precipitation as fog drip
39. Dispersing some seeds, killing or consuming others
40. Creating cavities and dens
41. Providing food for some animals, eating others
42. Aerating the soil and reducing bulk density
43. Providing space or spatial separation (as predator from prey)

See 43 page text on services at http://www.frc.state.mn.us/Landscp/econ_lit_search_1003.pdf

See the 69 key ecological "functions" such as pollination and cavity creating in Berwick, S., B.G. Marcot, P. Paquet, and P. Whitney. 2001. Ecosystem-based selection of wildlife species for comparing future landscape alternatives in Columbia River Basin, p.60-63 inR. Filed, R.J. Warren, H. Okarma, P.P. Sievert (editors) Wildlife, land, and people:priorities for the 21st century, The Wildlife Society, Bethesda, MD.

See Daily, Gretchen C. 1997. Nature services, Island Press

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This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision July 1, 2004.