Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem services are what makes our lives as humans healthy. Without a healthy ecosystem, our way of life would be very different as we depend on our wilderness for our daily lives. We benefit gratefully from the multiple services the environment gives us. Some services provided to us include clean drinking water, and the decomposition of waste. Scientists have categorized these services into 4 main groups; Provisioning Services, Supporting Services, Regulating Services, and Cultural Services. The benefits that people directly get from the natural systems are called ecosystem services.

Services the Ecosystem provides are extremely important to us. One reason is that they are essential to our civilization. Without the trees that we get our wood from, a vast majority of our homes would not be built the same way. We would have to be mostly reliant on gas and oil to heat our homes instead of having the option to have a wood stove for heat. Also, most of our furniture is built with some sort of wood. These Services also include grass lands, which is practically on every single continent. Grassland is defined as the vegetation that is dominated by grass. While we do have a vast expansion of life above water, there is also an entire world of organism and life below the shore line. Aquatic ecosystems are a major part in how we survive. All overseas cargo is shipped through the ocean. We get a large amount of our food from the ocean as well. There's so many ways we use the ocean to benefit our way of living, that without it our lives would be complete different. Many people use the waves as a calming mechanism, A lot of people have therapy sessions there as well.

Provisioning services consist of water, food, wood and other goods and material benefits we obtain from the ecosystem. Every ecosystem service provided the condition for growing, collecting, hunting and harvesting food, however provisioning is more specific to those categories. Provisioning provides great diversity of materials including wood, biofuels, and fibers from the wild and animal species. Us having fresh water is also an example. Without water we can’t survive, nor can any species on earth. Medicinal resources come into play as well. Our earth gives us natural cures against many diseases with a variety of plants and mushrooms. A lot of the plants are used in pharmaceutical practices to find new cures as well.

Supporting services provides living spaces for plants and animals and maintain a diversity between the two. Habitats provide everything that an individual plant or animal needs to survive: food; water; and shelter. Each ecosystem provides different habitats that can be essential for a species’ lifecycle. Migratory species including birds, fish, mammals and insects all depend upon different ecosystems during their movements.

Regulating Services include maintaining good air quality, as well with soil. Also trying to prevent flood and disease spread, and pollinating crops and flowers. The ecosystem influences the air quality and climate in local areas. So if you live in a larger city with high population and not a large amount of vegetation growth, the air quality will be affected by all of those things. Trees help regulate global climate change by storing greenhouse gasses. They remove carbon dioxide from our earth's atmosphere which is basically poison