3.1 Services from Natural Ecosystems
pg. 77
Key Concepts:
1. Natural ecosystems are of great value to humans.
Services from Natural Ecosystems
- Is there harm in replacing a natural ecosystem with farmland or a housing development?
Ecosystem Services and Products
- Natural ecosystems provide benefits to the biosphere and to humans.
Cultural Services
- Cultural benefits are for our enjoyment, including recreational, aesthetic, and spiritual.
- We get pleasure from our natural environments.
- Ecotourism allows for Ecotourists to engage in environmentally responsible travel to
relatively undisturbed natural areas. Tourists leave the area the way they found it,
undisturbed by humans.
Ecosystem Products
- We use products from the ecosystem to survive.
- Animals and plants for food, medicines, fibres, rubber, and dyes.
- Ontario forests produce over 11 billion dollars worth of products a year.
Table 1: Important Products from Terrestrial Ecosystems
Product
Maple Syrup
Original Source
Maple Trees
Use
Food, sweetener, flavouring
Henna, Indigo
Plant extracts
Dyes
Latex (rubber)
and chicle
Acetylsalicylic
acid (ASA)
(Aspirin)
Waxes:
Carnauba, Jojoba
Vincristine and
Vinblastine
Digitalis
Assorted tropical trees
Hoses, tires, chewing gum,
golf balls
Treats pain, blood thinner
Willow tree (original source of
salicylic acid)
Carnauba palm leaves, Jojoba seeds
Rosy periwinkle (tropical flowering
plant)
Foxglove (flowering plant)
Commercial wax products.
Cosmetics, foods, lubricants
Treatment of childhood
leukemia
Treatment of heart disorders
Other Ecosystem Services
- maintain abiotic and biotic features of the environment. Nutrient cycles, water, oxygen,
carbon, and nitrogen are maintained.
- Wind and water erosion and flooding are prevent by plant organisms.
- Plant organisms control ground water and surface water by absorbing and releasing
over time, while also filtering it.
Monetary Value of Ecosystem Services
- The dollar value of clean air, water, moderating climate, and paper fibre, medicines and
other products is high, trillions of dollars, yet there is no exact figure of the value of an
ecosystem.
- Ecosystem benefits are free and renewable if protected.
Evidence of Learning: Students can …
- identify services, products, and other benefits that natural ecosystems provide to
humans.
- explain why these services and products have value, although some of them are hard to
quantify monetarily.
Check Your Learning:
Questions 1 – 6, page 79
Summary:
- Cultural services are benefits we obtain related to our enjoyment of the environment.
- Ecosystems provide us with products such as wood fibre, medicines, and food.
- Ecosystems help protect us from some environmental threats.
- Ecosystems have monetary value, although this is difficult to quantify.