You are here:
The impact of chemical pollution on biodiversity and ecosystem services: the need for an improved understanding
Citation:
Backhaus, T., J. Snape, AND Jim Lazorchak. The impact of chemical pollution on biodiversity and ecosystem services: the need for an improved understanding. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management. Allen Press, Inc., Lawrence, KS, 8(4):575-576, (2012).
Impact/Purpose:
Provide an editorial for considerations of structure, function and ecosystem services in assessing impacts of chemicals in ecosystems
Description:
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) provided a framework that acknowledges biodiversity as one key factor for ensuring the continuous supply of ecosystem services, facilitating ecosystem stability and consequently as a critical basis for sustainable development. The close connection between biodiversity and basic ecosystem services (e.g. primary production, soil formation and nutrient recycling) as well as final ecosystem services (e.g. provision of water, food and feed) is central to the 2020 targets set in the Convention on Biological Diversity, and provides one of the foundations for the United Nations Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (http://www.ipbes.net). Impacts on biodiversity are particularly critical as they have tremendous direct or indirect effects on most, if not all, ecosystem services – but are almost impossible to mitigate as soon as they occur on a larger scale. Biodiversity also provides an “insurance policy” that minimizes the risk of drastic changes in ecosystems as a response to stressors: the larger the number of functionally related species in an ecosystem, the greater the chance that some of them will be resilient to a particular stressor. However, it is often unclear whether the relationship between a particular ecosystem service and biodiversity is linear or nonlinear, and whether abrupt thresholds exist. It is also largely unknown how associated societal costs respond to decreases in biodiversity.
