The Nature and Value of Ecosystem Services: An Overview Highlighting Hydrologic Services
Top Cited Papers
- 1 November 2007
- journal article
- Published by Annual Reviews in Annual Review of Environment and Resources
- Vol. 32 (1), 67-98
- https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.energy.32.031306.102758
Abstract
Ecosystem services, the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems, are a powerful lens through which to understand human relationships with the environment and to design environmental policy. The explicit inclusion of beneficiaries makes values intrinsic to ecosystem services; whether or not those values are monetized, the ecosystem services framework provides a way to assess trade-offs among alternative scenarios of resource use and land- and seascape change. We provide an overview of the ecosystem functions responsible for producing terrestrial hydrologic services and use this context to lay out a blueprint for a more general ecosystem service assessment. Other ecosystem services are addressed in our discussion of scale and trade-offs. We review valuation and policy tools useful for ecosystem service protection and provide several examples of land management using these tools. Throughout, we highlight avenues for research to advance the ecosystem services framework as an operational basis for policy d...Keywords
This publication has 144 references indexed in Scilit:
- Forests and water: The value of native temperate forests in supplying water for human consumptionEcological Economics, 2006
- A complex systems approach to the value of ecological resourcesEcological Economics, 2006
- Reversibility of forest conversion impacts on water budgets in tropical karst terrainForest Ecology and Management, 2006
- The influence of land-use changes on soil hydraulic properties: Implications for runoff generationForest Ecology and Management, 2005
- Global patterns in human consumption of net primary productionNature, 2004
- A typology for the classification, description and valuation of ecosystem functions, goods and servicesEcological Economics, 2002
- Snow processes in a forest clearing and in a coniferous forestJournal of Hydrology, 2002
- The economic value of wetland services: a meta-analysisEcological Economics, 2001
- Factors determining relations between stand age and catchment water balance in mountain ash forestsForest Ecology and Management, 2001
- Monitoring the effects of timber harvest on annual water yieldJournal of Hydrology, 1996