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News articles on Ecosystem Services

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Mongabay.com news articles on ecosystem services in blog format. Updated regularly.

Globalization could save the Amazon rainforest
(6/3/2007) The Amazon basin is home to the world's largest rainforest, an ecosystem that supports perhaps 30 percent of the world's terrestrial species, stores vast amounts of carbon, and exerts considerable influence on global weather patterns and climate. Few would dispute that it is one of the planet's most important landscapes. Despite its scale, the Amazon is also one of the fastest changing ecosystems, largely as a result of human activities, including deforestation, forest fires, and, increasingly, climate change. Few people understand these impacts better than Dr. Daniel Nepstad, one of the world's foremost experts on the Amazon rainforest. Now head of the Woods Hole Research Center's Amazon program in Belem, Brazil, Nepstad has spent more than 23 years in the Amazon, studying subjects ranging from forest fires and forest management policy to sustainable development. Nepstad says the Amazon is presently at a point unlike any he's ever seen, one where there are unparalleled risks and opportunities. While he's hopeful about some of the trends, he knows the Amazon faces difficult and immediate challenges.


Indonesia could earn $100-$180 million from carbon trading
(5/28/2007) Indonesia says it hopes to soon see millions of dollars from carbon trading, reports the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) in its latest update.


20-40% of U.S. bees have disappeared
(5/14/2007) Known and unknown ailments have killed 20 to 40 percent of bee colonies across the United States this winter according to a leading entomologist.


Canada's boreal forest must be saved
(5/14/2007) At a conference Monday, 1500 prominent scientists called for protection of Canada's boreal forest, one of the largest intact forest and wetland ecosystems remaining on the planet.


Amazon rainforest locks up 11 years of CO2 emissions
(5/8/2007) The amount and distribution of above ground biomass (or the amount of carbon contained in vegetation) in the Amazon basin is largely unknown, making it difficult to estimate how much carbon dioxide is produced through deforestation and how much is sequestered through forest regrowth. To address this uncertainty, a team of scientists from Caltech, the Woods Hole Institute, and INPE (Brazil's space agency), have developed a new method to determine forest biomass using remote sensing and field plot measurements. The researchers say the work will help them better understand the role of Amazon rainforest in global climate change.


Ecosystems are capital assets argues report
(5/7/2007) Global ecosystems should be treated as capital assets argues a new report released today by the World Resources Institute (WRI). The new WRI report examines trends revealed in the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) by the U.N. and puts forth an agenda for business, governments, and civil society to reverse ecosystem degradation.


Farming in the rainforest can preserve biodiversity, ecological services
(3/5/2007) While conversion of tropical forest for agriculture results in significant declines in biodiversity and carbon storage, an analysis of Indonesian rainforests shows that farming cacao under the partial shade of high canopy trees can provide a way to balance economic gain with environmental considerations.


Amazon deforestation damaging critical ecosystem services
(2/8/2007) Human disturbance of the Amazon rainforest is more extensive than previously thought say a team of scientists writing in the current edition of the journal Frontiers in Ecology. Reviewing recent research on the Amazon ecosystem, they note that human activities are affecting the health of the forest and impacting the ecological goods and services the Amazon provides mankind.


Amazon deforestation damaging critical ecosystem services
(2/8/2007) Human disturbance of the Amazon rainforest is more extensive than previously thought say a team of scientists writing in the current edition of the journal Frontiers in Ecology. Reviewing recent research on the Amazon ecosystem, they note that human activities are affecting the health of the forest and impacting the ecological goods and services the Amazon provides mankind.


Human ecological footprint to grow 34% by 2015 finds study
(2/8/2007) Population size and affluence are driving environmental degradation according to a new study published in the current edition of the journal Frontiers in Ecology. The authors say other widely cited drivers of environmental stress -- urbanization, economic structure, age distribution -- actually have relatively little impact.


Coral reefs help protect from tsunami damage
(12/18/2006) Healthy coral reefs can help reduce the impact of tsunami waves relative to unhealthy or dead reefs, according to a new Princeton University study published in the December 14 edition of the journal Geophysical Review Letters.


Biodiversity extinction crisis will disrupt important ecological services warns study
(10/25/2006) Loss of biodiversity will have an ecologically-costly impact according to a study published in the journal Nature this week. The new study, headed by a biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), found that species extinction will reduce nature's ability to maintain ecological balance and "services" such as water filtration, nutrient cycling, and pollination.


Animal pollinators responsible for 35 percent of world food crop
(10/25/2006) A new study calculates that 35 percent of the world's crop production is dependent on pollinators, like bats, bees, and birds. The research suggests that biodiversity loss could directly impact global food crops.


Forest protection best way to control rats finds study
(4/13/2006) The most cost-effective way to stop non-native rats and mongoose from decimating highly endangered species on larger tropical islands is not by intensive trapping, but instead by preserving the forest blocks where wildlife live, according to a study by the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other groups.


Insects worth $57 billion to US economy
(4/1/2006) A new study says insects are worth at least $57 billion to the American economy. In the April 2006 issue of BioScience, John E. Losey of Cornell University and Mace Vaughan of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation estimate the value of ecological services provided by insects. Looking at just four services--dung burial, control of crop pests, pollination, and wildlife nutrition--Losey and Vaughan calculate that the annual value of insects in these roles is at least $57 billion in the United States.


Coral reefs and mangroves have high economic value
(1/24/2006) Protecting coral reefs and mangrove forests makes economic sense according to a new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The report argues that conserving these ecosystems for the services they provide--from fisheries protection to erosion control to a source for medical compounds--is cost-effective relative to destroying them and substituting their role with man-made structures.


Deforestation causes 25% of greenhouse gas emissions
(12/10/2005) Yesterday the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) offered to provide forestry data and technical assistance to countries looking to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through the reduction of forest loss.


Deforestation and erosion starving Malawi
(10/13/2005) Forest loss and erosion could doom Malawi to perpetual food shortages as the country's fertile soil is literally swept down to its rivers and flushed out to sea.


Deforestation does not cause flooding says new study
(10/12/2005) Deforestation and logging do not increase the risk of major floods according to a new report from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Center for International forestry Research (CIFOR). The study, citing evidence showing that the frequency and extent of major floods has not changed over the last century despite significant reductions in forest cover, challenges the conventional belief that forest loss causes floods. Instead, FAO and CIFOR say that deforestation does have a role in small floods and topsoil erosion. Further, the report accuses Asian governments of using deforestation as an excuse to deflect criticism over their poor handling of human settlement in areas unsuitable for habitation.


Cultivated forests play important economic and ecological role in Indonesia
(5/17/2005) Old growth tropical forests are valuable and irreplaceable ecosystems that house the majority of Earth's known terrestrial biological diversity. While these forests are rapidly disappearing, they are not necessarily being completely cleared without replacement. In some regions, primary forests are being replaced with "cultivated forests" or "forest gardens," where useful trees are planted on farmlands after the removal of pre-existing natural forests. A new report Domesticating forests: How farmers manage forest resources by Genevieve Michon explores the characteristics and implications of these forests in Indonesia.


For What It's Worth: Ecological Services and Conservation
(5/4/2005) For a long time, preserving natural spaces was considered to be a favor to the environment without a true, measurable benefit to businesses, industrial production and productivity. In recent years however, scientists are increasingly producing substantial evidence to support the notion that the natural environment supplies a diverse range of renewable economic benefits beyond timber and fish. These benefits are termed “ecological services” and provide such valuable functions as water treatment, pollination and sediment capture, simply by remaining intact.


Impact of Deforestation - Local and National Effects
(3/1/2005) The local level is where deforestation has the most immediate effect. With forest loss, the local community loses the system that performed valuable but often underappreciated services like ensuring the regular flow of clean water and protecting the community from flood and drought. The forest acts as a sort of sponge, soaking up rainfall brought by tropical storms while anchoring soils and releasing water at regular intervals. This regulating feature of tropical rainforests can help moderate destructive flood and drought cycles that can occur when forests are cleared.


Tropical Rainforests of the World
(3/1/2005) Tropical rainforests are a world like none other; and their importance to the global ecosystem and human existence is paramount. Unparalleled in terms of their biological diversity, tropical rainforests are a natural reservoir of genetic diversity which offers a rich source of medicinal plants, high-yield foods, and a myriad of other useful forest products. They are an important habitat for migratory animals and sustain as much as 50 percent of the species on Earth, as well as a number of diverse and unique indigenous cultures. Tropical rainforests play an elemental role in regulating global weather in addition to maintaining regular rainfall, while buffering against floods, droughts, and erosion. They store vast quantities of carbon, while producing a significant amount of the world's oxygen. .


Impact of Deforestation - Soil Erosion
(3/1/2005) The loss of trees, which anchor the soil with their roots, causes widespread erosion throughout the tropics. Only a minority of areas have good soils, which after clearing are quickly washed away by the heavy rains. Thus crop yields decline and the people must spend income to import foreign fertilizers or clear additional forest. Costa Rica loses about 860 million tons of valuable topsoil every year, while the Great Red Island, Madagascar, loses so much soil to erosion (400 tons/ha) that its rivers run blood-red, staining the surrounding Indian Ocean. Astronauts have remarked that it looks like Madagascar is bleeding to death, an apt description of a country with grave environmental degradation and an ever-declining agricultural economy that depends on its soils. The rate of increase for soil loss after forest clearing is astonishing; a study in Ivory Coast (Cote d'Ivoire) found that forested slope areas lost 0.03 tons of soil per year per hectare; cultivated slopes annually lost 90 tons per hectare, while bare slopes lost 138 tons per hectare.



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