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Portrait of Henrik Smith. Photo.

Henrik Smith

Professor

Portrait of Henrik Smith. Photo.

Ecosystem services - current challenges and opportunities for ecological research

Author

  • Klaus Birkhofer
  • Eva Diehl
  • Jesper Andersson
  • Johan Ekroos
  • Andrea Früh-Müller
  • Franziska Machnikowski
  • Viktoria L. Mader
  • Lovisa Nilsson
  • Keiko Sasaki
  • Maj Rundlöf
  • Volkmar Wolters
  • Henrik Smith
Show all

Summary, in English

e concept of ecosystem services was originally developed to illustrate the benefits that natural ecosystems generate for society and to raise awareness for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation. In this article we identify major challenges and opportunities for ecologists involved in empirical or modeling ecosystem service research. The first challenge arises from the fact that the ecosystem service concept has not been generated in the context of managed systems. Ecologists need to identify the effect of anthropogenic interventions in order to propose practices to benefit service-providing organisms and associated services. The second challenge arises from the need to evaluate relationships between indicators of ecosystem services that are collected in ecological studies while accounting for uncertainties of ecological processes that underlie these services. We suggest basing the assessment of ecosystem services on the utilization of sets of indicators that cover aspects of service-providing units, ecosystem management and landscape modification. The third challenge arises from the limited understanding of the nature of relationships between services and a lack of a general statistical framework to address these links. To manage ecosystem service provisioning, ecologists need to establish whether services respond to a shared driver or if services are directly linked to each other. Finally, studies relating biodiversity to ecosystem services often focus on services at small spatial or short temporal scales, but research on the protection of services is often directed toward services providing benefits at large spatial scales. Ecological research needs to address a range of spatial and temporal scales to provide a multifaceted understanding of how nature promotes human well-being. Addressing these challenges in the future offers a unique opportunity for ecologists to act as promoters for the understanding about how to conserve benefits gained from nature.

Department/s

  • Biodiversity
  • Centre for Environmental and Climate Science (CEC)
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
  • Biodiversity and Conservation Science

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Publication/Series

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

Volume

2

Issue

12 January 2015

Document type

Journal article review

Publisher

Frontiers Media S. A.

Topic

  • Environmental Sciences

Status

Published

Research group

  • Biodiversity and Conservation Science

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2296-701X