Books on the topic 'Ecosystem services relationships'

If the health and well-being benefits attributable to contact with nature are to be realized, there needs to be a change in the framing of nature within urban environments. The way nature is perceived and valued and the way that it is incorporated in policy and practice need to be re-positioned. The discourse around that challenge and the resulting re-framing are set out. There is a discussion of the changing relationship between humans and the natural environment. Ideas around nature apart from, or in spite of, or for, or and people are considered. These paradigm shifts affect conservation policies and associated practices. The ecosystem services and disservices attributable to urban environments are assessed. The importance of cultural services within urban environments is highlighted. Tensions that exist within this changing relationship are causing humans to forget the natural world and its benefits, with knock-on ill effects to human health.

Essentials of Landscape Ecology is a new, comprehensive text that presents the principles, theory, methods, and applications of landscape ecology in an engaging and accessible format, supplemented by numerous examples and case studies from a variety of systems, including freshwater and marine “scapes.” Human activity has transformed landscapes worldwide on a scale that rivals or exceeds even the largest of natural forces, giving rise to a new geological age, the Anthropocene. As humans alter the structure and function of landscapes, the biological diversity and ecological relationships within those landscapes are also inevitably altered, to the extent that this may interfere with humanity’s efforts to sustain the productivity and multifunctional use of these landscapes. Landscape ecology has thus emerged as a new, multidisciplinary science to investigate the effects of human land use and environmental heterogeneity on ecological processes across a wide range of scales and systems: from the effects of habitat or resource distributions on the individual movements, gene flow, and population dynamics of plants and animals; to the human alteration of landscapes affecting the structure of biological communities and the functioning of entire ecosystems; to the sustainable management of natural resources and the ecosystem goods and services upon which society depends.

Relationship between functioning ecosystem services and human wellbeing has been established as a bridge connecting nature and society. It has also become central pillar of sustainability science and dictates the paradigms of sustainable development. But, conceptual frameworks that systematically integrates the important roles played by natural ecological chemicals by establishing empirical links between the nature and ecology not only varies, but lacks clear support. The value of ecological chemicals as ecosystem derived natural products warrants explicit acknowledgement, only then trade-offs between services and prioritization of policy can be realised. In the last 20 years, important roles played by the ecological chemicals in Bornean terrestrial and marine ecosystems were investigated and reported. Terrestrial plants produce Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOCs) and structurally interesting secondary metabolites that facilitate their ecological processes that are aimed to establish communication such as defence, attraction, deterrent and territorial marking. Some of the most commonly utilized herbs and plants of traditional medicine importance showed very interesting chemical constituents, that justify their traditional utilization for human wellbeing. The role of VOCs that originated from animal diet and emitted through decomposition of faeces, was traced back to their important role as attractants of insects, particularly dung beetles that facilitates the remineralization of faeces and returns C and N to soil as to replenish global C and N-sink. Marine flora and fauna are perhaps the most vivid producers of structurally interesting secondary metabolites with more than one ecological functions. Halogenated secondary metabolites produced by red algae Laurencia are unique in their structural design and exhibited multiple biological potentials. Similarly, soft corals in the Sulu-Sulawesi Coral Triangle produced a huge diversity of terpenoids and functions as feeding deterrents of these soft bodied invertebrates. Ecological chemicals obtained from the Bornean biodiversity also exhibited a wide array of medically important biological activities such as anti-microbial, anti-inflammation, anti-anticancer and serves an important array of lead pharmaceuticals. Some of these compounds are very potent and have been patented as lead-pharmaceutical candidates from Bornean natural products. Hence, ecological chemicals are important natural products that regulate ecological processes that ensures ecological balance in tropical ecosystems. Humans who are the custodians of natural ecosystem, stand to benefit directly and indirectly when we practice sustainable utilization and regulation of our natural resources.

How we determine what is nature, what is wild, or even what in nature is worth protecting occurs through our human perspective. Whether it is a charismatic manatee or a majestic redwood, we care about and protect the things we love because they offer us something we value. To make this value relevant in the economic marketplace of competing choices, Wild Capital: Nature’s Economic and Ecological Wealth relies on the ecosystem services model, where nature’s value is determined through the services intact ecosystems provide to our well-being. As one of the recreation components of this model, this book uses ecotourism and the changing tourist dynamic, as well as our evolving relationship with nature, to demonstrate how we can assign a measurable worth to natural resources. If a developer or a policy maker can more equitably compare the capital asset value of development with that of wild nature, better decisions regarding economic and ecological trade-offs can be made. Wild Capital then incorporates the cultural bias we have for charismatic megafauna to link policy decisions regarding biodiversity and habitat conservation to those charismatic animals we care about so intensely. The five megafauna case studies provide solid evidence of the role charismatic species can play in protecting our planet’s biodiversity and ensuring our well-being long into the future.

The concept of green growth offers both a means of reframing ecology–economy relationships and defining an agenda for change. This chapter sets out the framework for a green growth policy agenda. This agenda builds upon existing strategies and tools, such as use of mandatory technology or performance standards, but also is distinctive in expanding the scope of policymaking, emphasizing ecology–economy positive-sums, looking beyond ecological to other policy sectors, granting critical ecosystems principled priority in decisions, and incorporating social costs. As for tools, the green growth agenda relies heavily on market-like mechanisms such as pollution taxes or trading, on methods for valuing ecosystems services, and on reorienting investment strategies for green sectors and goals. In sum, there exists a rich and varied green growth policy agenda that may support a transition toward green growth.

Much literature on environmental health has described threats from the environment. The Oxford Textbook of Nature and Public Health: The Role of Nature in Improving the Health of a Population focuses on the role of nature for our health and well-being by demonstrating how we can gain multiple health benefits from nature, and how much we risk losing by destroying our surrounding natural environment. Providing a broad and inclusive picture of the multifaceted relation between human health and natural environments, the books covers all aspects of this relationship ranging from disease prevention; through physical activity in green spaces, to ecosystem services like climate change adaptation by urban trees preventing heat stress in hot climates. Nature’s potential hazardous consequences are also discussed including natural disasters, vector-borne pathogens, and allergies.

The book ends with a chapter devoted to discussing interactions between microbes and higher plants and animals. Symbiosis is sometimes used to describe all interactions, even negative ones, between organisms in persistent, close contact. This chapter focuses on interactions that benefit both partners (mutualism), or one partner while being neutral to the other (commensalism). Microbes are essential to the health and ecology of vertebrates, including Homo sapiens. Microbial cells outnumber human cells on our bodies, aiding in digestion and warding off pathogens. In consortia similar to the anaerobic food chain of anoxic sediments, microbes are essential in the digestion of plant material by deer, cattle, and sheep. Different types of microbes form symbiotic relationships with insects and help to explain their huge success in the biosphere. Protozoa are crucial for wood-boring insects, symbiotic bacteria in the genus Buchnera provide sugars to host aphids while obtaining essential amino acids in exchange, and fungi thrive in subterranean gardens before being harvested for food by ants. Symbiotic dinoflagellates directly provide organic material to support coral growth in exchange for ammonium and other nutrients. Corals are now threatened worldwide by rising oceanic temperatures, decreasing pH, and other human-caused environmental changes. At hydrothermal vents in some deep oceans, sulfur-oxidizing bacteria fuel an entire ecosystem and endosymbiotic bacteria support the growth of giant tube worms. Higher plants also have many symbiotic relationships with bacteria and fungi. Symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria in legumes and other plants fix more nitrogen than free-living bacteria. Fungi associated with plant roots (“mycorrhizal”) are even more common and potentially provide plants with phosphorus as well as nitrogen. Symbiotic microbes can provide other services to their hosts, such as producing bioluminescence, needed for camouflage against predators. In the case of the bobtail squid, bioluminescence is only turned on when populations of the symbiotic bacteria reach critical levels, determined by a quorum sensing mechanism.