The Basic Ideas of the Ecosystem Service Concept

In this chapter we discuss the different definitions, advantages and limitations of the concept of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are sets of environmental properties derived from ecosystem structures and processes which are arranged from an anthropocentric point of view. They are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems, and thus they can be used to represent the environmental interrelations between the three sectors of sustainability. The managing human-environmental systems, such as river basins, is strongly accompanied by several decisions about the intensity of human actions, which potentially affect natural or nature-near ecological systems. At river basins, upstream uses of water impact on the ecohydrologic functioning of downstream ecosystems, and thus provoke tradeoffs between the provision of upstream and downstream ecosystem services. Ecosystem services can be classified in many ways depending on the objectives of the observer but in all recent classifications, three groups of services are distinguished: regulating, provisioning and cultural services. The Identification of ecosystem services can be used to quantify the impacts on ecological systems, to contribute to the identification of gaps and to provide policy-relevant information on a sustainable use of these services to maintain their capacities for future generations. The ecosystem service concept has been developed very fast during the last years and a methodological framework has been created that can be applied in environmental management. Incorporating this concept into assessment frameworks, such as the DPSIR approach, makes it more broadly applicable. Despite some limitations, ecosystem services have the advantage to demonstrate the enormous human dependence from nature by focusing on the critical roles of ecosystem functions and structures for sustaining human life and well-being.