Ecosystem Services Reflection

The paper done by Carpenter et al. (2009, PNAS 106:1305-1312), has an overwhelming amount of detail on “Ecosystem Services” and how it attributed to “humans” or “man-kind.” I have two things to complain about right away with this idea and/or paper. Firstly, why does everything have to be attributed to “humans?” Is it in it own right to exist because of what it is? Why do “we” have to put a value on it for it to exist? Is it because the general public is too “un-educated” or “capitalistic” to understand it in any other way? Secondly, we are suppose to get this message out to the general public so that they can understand. How can we, as “scientist,” get messages out to the general public when they will not understand the jargon presented, as in this paper?

The general take home message of this paper is to have a better understanding on how to manage the relationship dynamics between human and the ecosystem that we rely on (Carpenter et al. 2009). Some of the feedbacks that were highlighted were: (i) ecosystems processes and landscape structure, (ii) provisioning and cultural ecosystem services, and (iii) human well being; and they can be looked at through three different view: local, regional and global. These are driven on both drivers on the spatial scale and time.



I found the amount of detail in "feedbacks," "drivers" and other factors sort of ridiculous. This could have been a much simpler paper (going into my second complaint above). I almost gave up, but I gave it a second (and now I found a third) chance and read it through a couple of times.