Forest Land Conversion, Ecosystem Services, and Economic Issues for Policy

Download or read book Forest Land Conversion, Ecosystem Services, and Economic Issues for Policy written by Robert A. Smail and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The continued conversion and development of forest land pose a serious threat to the ecosystem services derived from forested landscapes. There are unavoidable challenges involved in quantifying the threats from forest conversion and their related costs to human well-being: (1) most attempts to quantify the costs of forest conversion on ecosystem services will necessarily rely on specific ecological science that is often emerging, changing, or simply nonexistent; (2) given the interconnected nature of ecosystem products and processes, any attempt to quantify the effects of forest conversion must grapple with jointness in production; (3) the ecology and the human dimensions of ecosystems are highly specific to spatial-temporal circumstances.