ecosystem services collapsing
To live on the moon, you would need an atmosphere. On Earth the atmosphere is generated very largely by living organisms. To survive in your new atmosphere, you would have to take with you rather a lot of stuff that nature supplies here on Earth. Although many humans live in great luxury, more or less disconnected with the living world in their own perceptions, almost all of their well-being depends on goods and services delivered by things that live.
Everything we eat, for example, was recently nourished by ecosystems in the soil. These days the work of those soil organisms is often supplemented or disrupted by products synthesised from oil - another product of ecosystems, albeit ecosystems that lived some 360 million years ago. Cotton, wool, timber, and many pharmaceuticals are the product of the living world.
In 1981 Paul and Anne Ehrlich coined the term “ecosystem service” to refer to these things that humans get from the living world. A decade later the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment categorised the services into “provisioning” services such as food and fibre; “regulating” services such as control of climate, floods or disease; “cultural” services such as spiritual, cognitive, aesthetic and cultural benefits; and “supporting services” such as production of atmospheric oxygen, soil formation, and nutrient cycling, that themselves maintain the conditions for life on Earth.
This picture illustrates one of the more depressing findings of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, or MA; most of the ecosystems on Earth have been and continue to be degraded. The culprit, in every case, is the human species, either directly or indirectly. There are so many of us, and we demand so much from the planet, that ecosystem services are increasingly disrupted.
Among the out of focus tiles you will see “food” and “water”, and several other services that are missing letters here and there.
ecosystem services collapsing
To live on the moon, you would need an atmosphere. On Earth the atmosphere is generated very largely by living organisms. To survive in your new atmosphere, you would have to take with you rather a lot of stuff that nature supplies here on Earth. Although many humans live in great luxury, more or less disconnected with the living world in their own perceptions, almost all of their well-being depends on goods and services delivered by things that live.
Everything we eat, for example, was recently nourished by ecosystems in the soil. These days the work of those soil organisms is often supplemented or disrupted by products synthesised from oil - another product of ecosystems, albeit ecosystems that lived some 360 million years ago. Cotton, wool, timber, and many pharmaceuticals are the product of the living world.
In 1981 Paul and Anne Ehrlich coined the term “ecosystem service” to refer to these things that humans get from the living world. A decade later the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment categorised the services into “provisioning” services such as food and fibre; “regulating” services such as control of climate, floods or disease; “cultural” services such as spiritual, cognitive, aesthetic and cultural benefits; and “supporting services” such as production of atmospheric oxygen, soil formation, and nutrient cycling, that themselves maintain the conditions for life on Earth.
This picture illustrates one of the more depressing findings of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, or MA; most of the ecosystems on Earth have been and continue to be degraded. The culprit, in every case, is the human species, either directly or indirectly. There are so many of us, and we demand so much from the planet, that ecosystem services are increasingly disrupted.
Among the out of focus tiles you will see “food” and “water”, and several other services that are missing letters here and there.