Ecosystem Services: Benefits to Humans

• Ecosystem services are benefits humans receive from ecosystems, including products, resources, and various benefits.

Products and Resources

• Examples include lumber, paper, maple syrup, honey, fruits, animals, and medicines.
• These are useful in people's lives for various tasks and needs.

Cultural Benefits

• Examples include recreation, education, and spirituality.
• Ecosystems provide enjoyment, facilitate learning, and contribute to culture and spirit.

Environmental Benefits

• They involve producing oxygen, moderating climate, and filtering pollutants.
• These benefits help the environment and make sustainable.

Protection

• Ecosystems provide protection against erosion and flooding.
• They help prevent natural disasters, mitigating potential harm.

Economic Benefits

• These include forestry and ecotourism.
• Ecosystems can create jobs, sell products, generate income, and support the economy.

Natural Ecosystems

• They are not created by humans, such as forests, ponds, and marshes.
• They are often called sustainable, meaning they can remain relatively stable over time.
• Human activities altering biotic and abiotic factors can decrease the ecosystem's sustainability.
• Natural ecosystems contain renewable resources and do not need human maintenance to sustain that.
• Natural ecosystems can stay sustainable if managed responsibly.
• Replicating a natural ecosystem in an artificial setting is difficult.

Artificial Ecosystems

• Defined as created and maintained by humans.
• They are generally unsustainable.
• They require human maintenance and management.
• Examples include crop fields, gardens, terrariums, greenhouses, fish farms, and zoos.
• They can provide specific services without affecting natural ecosystems.
• Artificial ecosystems can offer faster service, better quality, and other benefits.
• Modified crops, for example, yield more wheat and contribute to bread-making.
• Artificial ecosystems are unsustainable because they depend on humans maintaining biotic and abiotic features.

Renewable Resources

• Defined as natural resources that are unlimited or can be quickly replenished.
• Examples include solar and wind energy and trees (if allowed to grow).

Non-Renewable Resources

• Defined as resources that cannot be replaced as quickly as consumed.
• Fossil fuels are examples.
• Cod stocks collapsed in 1993 because cod was fished faster than it could reproduce.

Sustainable Development

• It involves using Earth's resources at a rate at which they can be replenished.
• Requires individuals to manage resources, monitor the impact on ecosystems, set limits on resource use, and replace what is taken.
• It involves using fewer products that pollute and practicing responsible recreation by respecting ecosystems.

Equilibrium

• Describes an ecosystem's state where abiotic and biotic factors remain relatively constant over time.
• At equilibrium, populations are healthy and stable.
• In equilibrium, energy flows through the ecosystem, nutrients cycle through food webs, and photosynthesis and cellular respiration take place.
• Large ecosystems, like biomes, change relatively little over time.
• Smaller ecosystems change constantly.

Climate Change

• Climate changes occur extremely slowly.
• The most common types are cooling and warming periods

Glacial Periods

• Can last up to 100,000 years.
• Temperatures are lower, glaciers cover most of the earth, and lower sea levels result from frozen water.

Interglacial Periods

• Last from 10,000 to 20,000 years.
• The climate is warmer for shorter periods, and with less ice, sea levels rise.

Seasonal Change

• Occurs annually.
• Changing seasons affect abiotic factors, such as water availability, light availability, and temperature.
• Conditions may be difficult for organisms.
• Winter in Canada is an example.
• Many plant and animal species have adapted to survive winter.

Rapid Change

• It is any disturbance that quickly affects the ecosystem, such as volcanic eruptions, floods, or disease outbreaks.
• They can vary in severity and can be caused by humans or natural events.
• Ecosystems can recover from different disturbances through succession.

Ecological Succession

• When disturbance alters the equilibrium in an ecosystem, it undergoes a series of gradual changes to re-establish equilibrium.
• These changes are called succession, a process that helps ecosystems recover and restore equilibrium.
• It starts with small plants colonizing the open landscape.
• Subsequent plants alter the soil and abiotic environment.
• As conditions improve, more shrubs grow, followed by larger trees.
• Finally, other organisms find habitat in the improved conditions.

Primary Succession

• Primary succession occurs on bare rock
• An example is when a volcano erupts and destroys everything, and no life exists previously.
• This process takes longer than secondary succession.
• Process involves Pioneer species breaking down bare rock, then intermediate species growing, until a climax community establishes.

Secondary Succession

• Begins after a disruptful disturbance that doesn't destroy the community, such as severe pollution, forest fires, deforestation, lumbering, agriculture, or mining.
• Similar to primary succession.
• It does not require the time-consuming beginning stages.
• The process helps ecosystems recover from disturbances, maintains sustainability, and reverses severe damage.
• This process takes a long time and is not always applicable.
• The original disturbance cause has to be removed

Causes of Loss of Biodiversity

• Swamp drying, deforestation, grazing, and urban construction are the causes.
• Main factors include non-native species, pollution, habitat loss, land fragmentation, and deforestation.

Introduction of Non-Native Species

• Involves a species humans introduce to an ecosystem where it does not naturally occur.
• Invasive species are a non-native species that negatively impacts the natural environment.
• Invasive species thrive without predators or diseases and quickly reproduce.
• They can cause ecological problems by altering nutrient and energy flow cycles and feeding on native species.
• Tourism problems: A loss of natural species can reduce tourism.
• Economic problems stem from damage to crops.
• Health is affected by pesticide use and the spread of disease by invasive species.

Controlling Introduced Species

• Chemical control uses pesticides to manage invasive species.
• Mechanical control uses physical barriers or removal.
• Biological control introduces other organisms to help control invasive species.

Farming Practices

• Soil is one of Earth's most important resources which sustains plants
• It provides water, nutrients, oxygen, and physical support.
• It's a mixture of minerals, water, dissolved nutrients, air spaces, and decomposing organic material.
• Air spaces in the soil serve to allow water and nutrients to pass through to plant roots, and provide oxygen to plant roots and soil organisms.
• Plants need nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium

Managing Soil Nutrients

• Natural ecosystems recycle nutrients; they are returned to the soil through decomposition and animal waste.
• Plants absorb nutrients from the soil to grow.
• With artificial ecosystems like farmland, the soil eventually depletes nutrients if wastes aren't returned.
• Nutrients are disrupted when crops are harvested

Agroecosystems

• Agroecosystems refers to farms or agricultural ecosystems.
• These ecosystem's typically grow monocultures (single crop types).
• They are unsustainable because they lack biodiversity.
• Humans are needed to maximize crop growth by maintaining biotic and abiotic features.
• Management techniques include ploughing, weeding, fertilizing, irrigation, and pesticides.
• In agriculture, the nutrients removed from the soil from crops are not returned, so fertilizers are used to replace the lost nutrients

Fertilizers

• Natural fertilizers are nutrients from natural sources that haven't been chemically altered, such as compost or animal waste.
• Advantages involve less danger of over-fertilizing, slow release of nutrients, improved soil structure, and benefiting cycling and microorganisms.
• Disadvantages include low nutrient concentration, slower action, difficulty in measurement, and application.
• Synthetic fertilizers are manufactured nutrients using chemical processes.
• Advantages include quick nutrient release, precise measurement of amounts, and ease of application.
• Disadvantages are that production is energy intensive, it causes water pollution, nutrients are lost through leaching, and can cause soil organism imbalance.
• Overall impact includes high concentration, rapid changes in soil organisms, less organic matter, loss of naturally occurring nutrients, and becoming susceptible to erosion

Leaching

• Occurs when water removes nutrients from the soil.
• High nitrogen levels in drinking water can cause health problems, especially in babies
• It contaminates aquatic ecosystems during rainfall, leading to algae growth, decomposition, reduced oxygen, and death of aquatic organisms.
• Algae growth increase, oxygen decreases

Environmental Conditions

• Environmental conditions such as light, pH temperatures, stagnant water, and nutrients.
• Climate change causes increased air and water temperatures, droughts, flooding, and increased CO2 and sea level rise.
• Reduce algae bloom, to protect the economy, supports health, reduces climate change, protects our ecosystem

Controlling Flow of Water

• Farmers need water to grow healthy crops.
• Farmers use irrigation and drainage to control farmland that is too dry/wet.
• Changing water levels can harm aquatic ecosystems and cause water storages.

Soil Compaction

• Occurs when heavy equipment/trucks drive, or too many people walk on soil.
• It inhibits water and oxygen flow of plant roots
• Alternative farming methods include organic farming, no-tillage farming, and crop rotation to protect soil communities

Organic Farming

• Agriculture that doesn't use pesticides/fertilizers.
• Natural fertilizers are better because they are less concentrated and less negative impacts to the soil

No Tillage Farming

• Leaving the ground undisturbed after a crop is harvested
• Helps retain soil nutrients, reduces compaction, and improves soil quality

Crop Rotation

• It involves changing or rotating crops in an area of land.
• It provides soil with different nutrients, and reduces fertilizers/pesticides.

Crop Selection

• Selection involves growing crops that fit local growing standards
• Helps reduce need for water drainage/irrigation

Indoor farming

• Includes hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics.
• They make it easier to grow plants, requires less water, not weather dependent can use year round, less sun needed.
• Indoor farming helps reduce soil erosion.
• Controls need for pesticides.
• Features of regular vs. vertical farming varies

Aquaponics

• Fish waste is converted to fertilizer for plants by microbes, and plants filter the water to return to fish.

Hydroponics

• Growing plants without soil.
• Uses exposed roots

Aeroponics

• Plants are suspended in air and water solution is sprayed.