Search results for "ecosystem service"
showing 10 items of 209 documents
Paradigms on landfill mining: From dump site scavenging to ecosystem services revitalization
2017
For the next century to come, one of the biggest challenges is to provide the mankind with relevant and sufficient resources. Recovery of secondary resources plays a significant role. Industrial processes developed to regain minerals for commodity production in a circular economy become ever more important in the European Union and worldwide. Landfill mining (LFM) constitutes an important technological toolset of processes that regain resources and redistribute them with an accompanying reduction of hazardous influence of environmental contamination and other threats for human health hidden in former dump sites and landfills. This review paper is devoted to LFM problems, historical developm…
Sectoral policies cause incoherence in forest management and ecosystem service provisioning
2022
Various national policies guide forest use, but often with competing policy objectives leading to divergent management paradigms. Incoherent policies may negatively impact the sustainable provision of forest ecosystem services (FES), and forest multifunctionality. There is uncertainty among policymakers about the impacts of policies on the real world. We translated the policy documents of Finland into scenarios including the quantitative demands for FES, representing: the national forest strategy (NFS), the biodiversity strategy (BDS), and the bioeconomy strategy (BES). We simulated a Finland-wide systematic sample of forest stands with alternative management regimes and climate change. Fin…
Chapter 4: Direct and indirect drivers of change in biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.
2018
The aim of this chapter is to assess evidence of the status and trends of the drivers that affect biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. There are three wider categories of nature’s contributions to people: regulating, material and non-material contributions, that are similar to, but not identical to classifications of ecosystem services (see Chapter 1). Ecosystems are dynamic interacting networks of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms, above and below ground and water-surfaces. These biodiverse networks of interacting organisms respond to a set of environmental factors such as climate, soil, or water conditions. Social-ecological systems also include human activities (di…
The relevance of ecological status to ecosystem functions and services in a large boreal lake
2014
Summary Environmental conventions aim to protect ecosystem structures and functions to provide goods and services for mankind. The degree of aquatic ecosystem naturalness, or ecological status as it is defined in the Water Framework Directive (WFD) of the European Union, is notionally linked to supplies of ecosystem services. In practice, these links have rarely been documented or even investigated, and to justify conservation and management objectives based on the status indicators, it is essential to demonstrate their relationships to ecosystem functions and services. The WFD requires member states to classify their surface waters aiming to achieve good ecological status of water bodies. …
ECOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT AS A FIRST STEP IN THE EVALUATION OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES PROVIDED BY LOTIC ECOSYSTEMS
2013
ABSTRACT The ecosystems offer to the socio-economic system a series of goods and services derived from their processes and biodiversity. Ecosystem services offered by a river are at their highest potential when the river status is close to the natural one. Once the river is affected by human impact due to resources exploitation, hydro technical works, water abstraction or improper land use, the ecological status declines and the ecosystem services become scarce. This is why an ecological assessment is necessary in order to establish the connection between the ecosystem services and the human impact. In this paper, the ecological assessment of Timiș River was done, allowing the classificatio…
Vineyard irrigation and assessment of ecosystem service: Experimental trials on “Catarratto” cultivar for the production of “Bianco di Alcamo” DOC wi…
2022
Water is an important resource for humans both for drinking and for irrigation. In the case of irrigation, the use of water resources leads to many direct benefits for farmers. The use of irrigation water, in addition to having consequences for those directly involved, determines positive externalities on the ecosystem in general. In this research the value of the ecosystem service that determines water for irrigation was estimated. The method used was that of the gross margin method which determined a value of 200.10 (sic)/ha. The research results are very important in relation to climate change which makes water increasingly important as an element of production in Mediterranean environme…
Modeling the influence of alternative forest management scenarios on wood production in the mediterranenan region. The MiMoSe approach.
2014
Ecosystem services (ES) are defined as the benefits that human obtain from ecosystems. Forest ecosystems provide many essential goods and services, such as flood and landslide control, erosion prevention and maintenance of soil fertility, water and air quality, biodiversity, wildlife habitat, recreational space for humans and aesthetic appreciation of natural landscapes, wood for fuel, construction and fibre, biomass for energy, and non-timber forest products. The quality and quantity of these goods and services are influenced by forest management, especially in the Mediterranean area where the forest has been exploited for a long time. In this study, we propose a method (MiMoSe- Multiscale…
Describing urban soils through a faceted system ensures more informed decision-making
2016
Urban areas are increasing worldwide at a dramatic rate and their soils definitely deserve more attention than they have received in the past. In urban environments, soils potentially provide the same ecosystem services as in rural and wild environments, although in some cases they are depleted of their basic functions, such as when they lose their productive and filtering capacities because of sealing, and become mere supports for infrastructures. In other cases, soils of urban areas acquire new functions that are unique to these environments. Current soil classifications fail to effectively account for the complexity of urban soils and the information that is required for their management…
The interdisciplinary nature of <i>SOIL</i>
2015
Abstract. The holistic study of soils requires an interdisciplinary approach involving biologists, chemists, geologists, and physicists, amongst others, something that has been true from the earliest days of the field. In more recent years this list has grown to include anthropologists, economists, engineers, medical professionals, military professionals, sociologists, and even artists. This approach has been strengthened and reinforced as current research continues to use experts trained in both soil science and related fields and by the wide array of issues impacting the world that require an in-depth understanding of soils. Of fundamental importance amongst these issues are biodiversity,…
Environmental Quality and Entrepreneurial Activity in Rural Tourism in Italy
2012
We estimate the relation between environmental quality and services in rural tourism in Italy. We use the average number of firms per region in 2003-07 to indicate entrepreneurial activity. We suggest that heterogeneity among administrative regions can be tied to environmental quality. Incorporated farms in rural tourism are relatively more common in regions with better environmental quality, and command higher average price from better quality in hospitality. Only 7% of entrepreneurial activity can be attributable to environmental quality. We conclude that rural tourism activity in Italy is not genuinely tied to environmental quality.