The values of ecosystem services provided by lakes and reservoirs are examined through a meta-analysis on an expanded worldwide database. The study assesses the socio-economic values attributable to the hydrological, biogeochemical and ecological functions provided by lakes and reservoirs (either natural or artificial). Based on the most extensive global database of non-market and market valuat...

Article history: Received 10 May 2007 Received in revised form 20 September 2008 Accepted 23 September 2008 Available online 28 October 2008 The concept of ecosystems services has become an important model for linking the functioning of ecosystems to human welfare. Understanding this link is critical for a widerange of decision-making contexts.While there have been several attempts to come upwi...

The crucial role of biodiversity in the links between ecosystems and societies has been repeatedly highlighted both as source of wellbeing and as a target of human actions, but not all aspects of biodiversity are equally important to different ecosystem services. Similarly, different social actors have different perceptions of and access to ecosystem services, and therefore, they have different...

As human pressures on ecosystems continue to increase, research involving the effective incorporation of social values information into the context of comprehensive ecosystem services assessments is becoming more important. Including quantified, spatially explicit social value metrics in such assessments will improve the analysis of relative tradeoffs among ecosystem services. This paper descri...

The ecosystem service concept is becoming more and more acknowledged in science and decision-making. Taking an economic valuation approach, we quantified the economic value change of ecosystem services for different land use types in the middle basin of Heihe River, Northwest China. Eight ecosystem services indicators were selected: raw materials production, crop production, gas regulation, hyd...

Ecosystem services are the benefits obtained from the environment that increase human well-being. Economic valuation is conducted by measuring the human welfare gains or losses that result from changes in the provision of ecosystem services. Bats have long been postulated to play important roles in arthropod suppression, seed dispersal, and pollination; however, only recently have these ecosyst...

The evaluation of ecosystem services is a tool to raise awareness about benefits of ecosystem functions for human well-being. In Brazil, few studies and reports assess ecosystem services in a watershed context. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by assessing ecosystem services of Jacaré-Guaçu and Jacaré-Pepira Watersheds (São Paulo State, Brazil) in a temporal scale of 10 years. Land cov...

Tehran is the capital city of Iran and its inhabitants are suffering from air pollution.Green roofs can be one of the choices to deal with this problem. In this paper, ability ofgreen roofs in absorbing four air pollutants (PM10, SO2, NO2, and CO2) in Tehran wasvaluated. First, the potential of 1 m2 of a hypothetical green roof in Tehran in absorbingPM10 and SO2 during 1 year was estimated usin...

Despite increasing attention to the human dimension of conservation projects, a rigorous, systematic methodology for planning for ecosystem services has not been developed. This is in part because flows of ecosystem services remain poorly characterized at local-to-regional scales, and their protection has not generally been made a priority. We used a spatially explicit conservation planning fra...

Wetlands provide a diverse range of ecosystem services supporting livelihoods of many people. Despite their value, wetlands are continuously being degraded. There is scant information on individual wetlands, people’s dependency and their exploitation at a local scale. We therefore assessed wetland ecosystem services, the drivers of change and impacts of those drivers on ecosystem services and p...