UNC Ecology Seminar: Taylor Ricketts

Putting ecosystem services on the map

Natural ecosystems support human livelihoods and economies in numerous ways. These ecosystem services include carbon storage by forests, water regulation and purification by terrestrial systems, and crop pollination by wild bees. Recent syntheses, such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and TEEB, have brought widespread attention to this powerful and intuitive concept. To inform conservation and management efforts, however, we need to supply decision-makers with practical information on where these ecosystem services come from, who they benefit, and what those benefits are worth. In this talk I’ll describe three efforts to quantify the ecological importance and economic value of ecosystem services, building from specific field studies of single services to broader-scale, multi-service assessments.