Types of Ecosystem Services
Following are the 4 types of ecosystem services present in the ecosystem:
Provisioning Services
Provisioning services refer to the benefits that the organisms derived from the ecosystem. Human beings and all other organisms in the ecosystem derive a lot of things from the ecosystem such as food, shelter, water, clothing, etc. We cannot survive without interacting with the ecosystem. Apart from all these direct benefits, we also get certain indirect benefits from the ecosystem such as natural gas, LPG, wood, coal, minerals, etc.
Regulating Services
Our ecosystem helps to sustain life through the process of moderation of natural phenomena. Without the ecosystem, natural phenomena will either be extreme or completely absent. This function of the ecosystem is termed a regulating service of the ecosystem. The ecosystem has various functions such as cleaning of air by plants, pollination, decomposition of waste, and prevention of soil erosion by trees. These functions of the ecosystem make the Earth suitable to live.
Cultural Services
The cultural aspects of human life are interlinked with how they interact with the ecosystem and nature of the surroundings in which they live. Various civilizations evolved over time and interacted differently with their ecosystem which shaped their cultural habits and life. Thus we can say that cultural services of the ecosystem are those services that influence the cultural life of people and leads to the advancement of the people, and their creativity, and affects the local, national, and global cultures.
Supporting Services
These are the most important and fundamental services provided by the ecosystem that are responsible to sustain life on the Earth. These services of the ecosystem are provided by the various processes that take place in the ecosystem but which are not visible as such. A number of processes such as photosynthesis, oxygen cycle, carbon cycle, phosphorous cycle, etc. are responsible to maintain life on this Earth. One cannot imagine life without these services of the ecosystem. Thus all other services of the ecosystem are directly dependent on supporting services of the ecosystem.
Types of Ecosystem Services – CBSE Class 12- Ecosystem
Types of Ecosystem Services: Ecosystem Services is an effort sponsored by the UN in order to study and analyze the impact of human actions on the ecosystem because humans directly interact with the ecosystem and derive a number of benefits from the ecosystem and these actions of humans also lead to changes in the ecosystem. This effort under the title of Millennium Ecosystem Assessment classified the ecosystem services into 4 major types. In this article, we shall study these 4 ecosystem services.