Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 6
Ecosystem Services
Heather Tallis, Anne Guerry, and Gretchen C. Daily
Glossary
Ecosystem services
The wide array of benefits that ecosystems, and their
biodiversity, confer on humanity.
Marginal value
The economic value of the next incremental unit of some-
thing. In this context, marginal values are those associated
with managing the next small unit of an ecosystem in
a particular way (e.g., preserving, rather than clearing, the
next unit of forest). They can also be the partial contribution
of natural capital to a final good that is produced with other
inputs. For example, the marginal value of irrigation water
for crop production is the value of the incremental crop yield
that can be attributed to irrigation, rather than to labor,
fertilizer, and other inputs.
Natural capital
Here we focus on living, renewable forms of natural capital,
which constitute a stock - of an ecosystem and the biota that
makes it up - that generates a flow of ecosystem services.
