2012), fiber, bioenergy (Sun and Vose 2016), and recreational use of wildlands stress natural ecosystems and contribute directly to the decline of watershed hydrological services (Brauman et al. Increasing demands on ecosystem services such as clean water (Caldwell et al. Fresh water availability and supply are increasingly unreliable due to pollution of air, soil, and water depletion of groundwater shrinking snowpack and glaciers sea level rise and increased climate variability and change (Vorosmarty 2002 Vorosmarty et al. Unfortunately, ecosystem services are under serious threats and rapidly diminishing as a whole in the Anthropocene in many watersheds around the world (Falkenmark 2003 Jackson et al. It is critical to understand how human-dominated ecosystems work in order to properly define and evaluate ecosystem services from both ecological and economical points of view (Boyd and Banzhaf 2007). 2002) and is essential to all forms of life on Earth and human civilization (Gleick 2003).
Journal of hydrological processes driver#
Indeed, water is the most fundamental driver for ecological processes (Chapin et al. Among the myriad of services provided by ecosystems, hydrological services such as water purification and water supply are considered the key to realizing other ecological services such as drinking water, recreation, and human health (Brauman et al. 2004), and sustainable development policy making (Asbjornsen et al. 2017), watershed management (Falkenmark et al. 2003 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Program) 2005), are increasingly used as a framework worldwide for the purposes of ecological restoration and conservation (Wei et al.
Future studies should focus on the bidirectional interactions between hydrological functions and services and human actions to solve real world problems such as water shortages, ecological degradation, and climate change adaptation.Įcosystem services, the goods and services that ecosystems provide for human well-being (Alcamo et al. To better assess ecosystem services, future ecohydrological studies need to better account for the scaling effects of natural and anthropogenic stressors exerted on evapotranspiration and other water supply and demand processes. We identify research gaps in studying ecological processes mainly including energy, carbon, water, and nutrient balances to better assess and quantify ecosystem services that are critical for sustaining natural resources for future generations. Our synthesis focuses on managed ecosystems that are dominated by humans and explores how ecological processes affect the tradeoffs and synergies of multiple ecosystem services. We synthesize current literature to illustrate the importance of understanding the ecohydrological processes for accurately quantifying ecosystem services under different environmental and socioeconomic settings and scales. The objective of this review is to explore the intimate connections between ecohydrological processes and water-related ecosystem services in human-dominated ecosystems in the Anthropocene. The framework for ecosystem services has been increasingly used in integrated watershed ecosystem management practices that involve scientists, engineers, managers, and policy makers.
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