Our society receives many benefits from natural and managed ecosystems [1]. The production of food, fiber, and building materials are perhaps the most tangible goods provided by the natural world. There are a myriad of benefits provided to us by our surrounding ecosystem including: purified/potable water, hospitable climatic conditions, and a wealth of diverse organisms from which we derive medicines, industrial processes, and agricultural productivity, to name a few. Ecosystem services (services provided by the environment that directly benefit humans) are so thoroughly interwoven into the fundamental basis of modern civilization [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] it is difficult to ascribe value to these services [5]. However, some have attempted to do so. For example, in 1997 Constanza et al. [9] calculated that the value of the entire biosphere was somewhere on the order of US $16-54 trillion per year (with the global gross national domestic product total around $18 trillion per year). They point out due to the uncertainties inherent to such a comprehensive estimation, the figure they generated should be considered a minimum value. However, it is clear that ecosystem services are central to the continued prosperity of human civilizations.
From the alteration of local ecosystems to the global biosphere as a whole, the deleterious effect of humanity on the environment has been well documented in recent years [10]. The dominant perspective on social-ecological systems have implicitly assumed a stable and infinitely resilient environment where resource flows could be controlled and nature would repair itself when human stressors were removed [11]. However, it is becoming clear that the human stressors are not being removed and are increasing as the human population grows. Therefore, managing for ecosystem resilience is imperative for the continued maintenance of hospitable environments.
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3. Bolund, P. and S. Hunhammar, Ecosystem services in urban areas. Ecological Economics, 1999. 29(2): p. 293-301.
4. Costanza, R. and H.E. Daly, Natural capital and sustainable development. Conservation Biology, 1992. 6(1): p. 37-46.
5. Daily, G.C., et al., Ecology - The value of nature and the nature of value. Science, 2000. 289(5478): p. 395-396.
6. Li, J., Z.Y. Ren, and Z.X. Zhou, Ecosystem services and their values: a case study in the Qinba mountains of China. Ecological Research, 2006. 21(4): p. 597-604.
7. Wall, D.H., ed. Sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem services in soils and sediments. SCOPE. Vol. 64. 2004, Island Press: Washington DC.
8. Naeem, S., et al., Declining biodiversity can alter the performance of ecosystems. Nature, 1994. 368(6473): p. 734-737.
9. Costanza, R., et al., The value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature, 1997. 387(6630): p. 253-260.
10. MA, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). 2004: Washington DC.
11. Folke, C., Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social-ecological systems analyses. Global Environmental Change-Human And Policy Dimensions, 2006. 16(3): p. 253-267.
