Networking Our Way to Better Ecosystem Service Provision

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

The ecosystem services (EcoS) concept is being used increasingly to attach values to natural systems and the multiple benefits they provide to human societies. Ecosystem processes or functions only become EcoS if they are shown to have social and/or economic value. This should assure an explicit connection between the natural and social sciences, but EcoS approaches have been criticized for retaining little natural science. Preserving the natural, ecological science context within EcoS research is challenging because the multiple disciplines involved have very different traditions and vocabularies (common-language challenge) and span many organizational levels and temporal and spatial scales (scale challenge) that define the relevant interacting entities (interaction challenge). We propose a network-based approach to transcend these discipline challenges and place the natural science context at the heart of EcoS research.
Original languageEnglish
JournalTrends in Ecology & Evolution
Volume31
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)105-115
Number of pages11
ISSN0169-5347
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2016
Externally publishedYes

ID: 189671563