Despite the fact that scientific and political consideration for ecosystem services has dramatically increased over the past decade, few studies have focused on marine and coastal ecosystem services for conservation strategies. We used an ecosystem services approach to assess spatial distributions of habitat risks and four ecosystem services (coastal protection, carbon storage, recreation, and ...

Global efforts to conserve biodiversity have the potential to deliver economic benefits to people (i.e., "ecosystem services"). However, regions for which conservation benefits both biodiversity and ecosystem services cannot be identified unless ecosystem services can be quantified and valued and their areas of production mapped. Here we review the theory, data, and analyses needed to produce s...

E service is the collective name for the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. As a scientific concept, it can be dated back to the 1960s; whereas, the proliferation of ecosystem service research has been since the late 1990s driving by the increasing environmental concerns of human societies. Ecosystem service has been defined from an anthropocentric perspective that links ecosystems an...

National ecosystem assessments form an essential knowledge base for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services. We analyze eight European (sub-)national ecosystem assessments (Portugal, United Kingdom, Spain, Norway, Flanders, Netherlands, Finland, and Germany) and compare their objectives, political context, methods, and operationalization. We observed remarkable differences in breadth o...

Ecosystems are commonly exploited and manipulated to maximize certain human benefits. Such changes can degrade systems, leading to cascading negative effects that may be initially undetected, yet ultimately result in a reduction, or complete loss, of certain valuable ecosystem services. Ecosystem-based management is intended to maintain ecosystem quality and minimize the risk of irreversible ch...

1. Forests (natural but also human-made or modified) are among the most important providers of ecosystem services for the whole world. 2. Based on scientific evidence, it is certain that: (a) Ecosystem services are essential to the survival of human beings. (b) Forest ecosystems operate and provide services on such a grand scale and in such intricate and little-explored ways that most cannot ef...

1 Balkanized research in ecological engineering revealed by a bibliometric analysis of earthworms and ecosystem services. Abstract Energy crisis, climate changes and biodiversity losses have reinforced the drive for more ecologically-based approaches for environmental management. Such approaches are characterized by the use of organisms rather than energy-consuming technologies. Although earthw...

In our increasingly technological society, people give little thought to how dependent they are on the proper functioning of ecosystems and the crucial services for humanity that flow from them. Ecosystem services are “the conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfill human life” (Daily 1997); in other words, “the set of ecosys...