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opportunity to solve this problem. It is based on the assumption that “the services
of ecological systems and the natural capital stocks that produce them are critical to
the functioning of the earth's life-support system, they contribute to human welfare
and therefore represent part of the total economic value of the planet” (Costanza
et al., 1997 ). This concept is fully compatible with the idea of sustainable develop-
ment because it gives the possibility to involve important resources and services for
the future generation like genetic material and habitat function in the processes of
economic valuation and regional planning.
The ecosystem services are defined as “the conditions and processes through
which natural ecosystems and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfill
human life
...
” (Daily, 1997 ), “ecological processes that benefit people directly (e.g.
food) or indirectly (e.g. pollination)
(Luck et al., 2003 ), “benefits that people
derive from ecosystems” (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005 ). Ecosystem
services consist of flows of materials, energy and information from natural capital
stocks which combined with manufactured and human capital services to provide
human welfare (Costanza et al., 1997 ). The term ecosystem services lumps together
economic benefits that can be classified as: (1) goods - products obtained from
ecosystems, such as resource harvest, water or timber; (2) services - certain
ecological regulatory functions, such as water purification, climate regulation or
erosion control. Thus, in the current literature the word “goods” is usually left out
from the term but the meaning remains the same. According to the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment ( 2005 ), the ecosystem services are grouped into four broad
categories: supporting services; provisioning services; regulation services; cultural
services . The ecosystem functions providing these services can be classified into
four primary categories (de Groot et al., 2000 ): (1) regulation functions - related to
the capacity of natural ecosystems to regulate essential ecological processes and life
support systems through bio-geochemical cycles and other biospheric processes;
(2) habitat functions - natural ecosystems provide refuge and reproduction-habitat
to wild plants and animals and thereby contribute to the (in situ) conservation
of biological and genetic diversity and evolutionary processes; (3) production
functions - photosynthesis and nutrient uptake by autotrophs convert energy,
carbon dioxide, water and nutrients into a wide variety of carbohydrate structures
which are then used by secondary producers to create an even larger variety of
living biomass; (4) information functions - because most of human evolution took
place within the context of undomesticated habitat, natural ecosystems provide an
essential “reference function” and contribute to the maintenance of human health by
providing opportunities for reflection, spiritual enrichment, cognitive development,
re-creation and aesthetic experience. The valuation of ecosystem services is an
important task “inseparable from the choices and decisions we have to make about
ecological systems” (Costanza et al., 1997 ).
The landscape is considered as “a heterogeneous territory consisting of cluster
of interacting ecosystems that are repeated in space” (Forman and Godron, 1986 ).
The ecosystems could have different spatial extend and the mapping of all ecosys-
tems for particular area (i.e. municipality) is almost unattainable task. On the other
hand, the valuation of the ecosystem services requires appropriate spatial data for
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