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build many new water treatment facilities that use expen- gain. Nevertheless, the research itself has instrumental value
sive filtration technologies. New York City, for example, because the scientists and others benefit from these activities
draws its water from naturally clean reservoirs in the Catskill by gaining knowledge. While intellectual gain and aesthetic
Mountains. But residential development and tourism in the satisfaction may be difficult to quantify, they can be consid-
area have threatened to increase contamination of the res- ered cultural services that have instrumental value.
ervoirs with silt and chemicals. Building a filtration plant
adequate to address these problems would cost $6 billion to The Monetary Value of Ecosystem Services
$8 billion. For this reason, New York City and the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency have been working to Most economists believe that the instrumental values of an
protect sensitive regions of the Catskills so that the reser- ecosystem can be assigned monetary values, and they are
voirs continue to serve as an important support system. beginning to incorporate these values into their calculations
of the economic costs and benefits of various human activi-
ties. However, assigning a dollar value is easier for some cat-
®
AP Exam Tip egories of ecosystem services than for others. Recently, a
team of scientists and economists attempted to estimate the
Organisms can provide multiple different ecosystem total value of ecosystem services to the human economy.
®
services. On the AP Environmental Science Exam your They considered replacement value — the cost to replace the
description of the service is necessary to defend your services provided by natural ecosystems. They also looked
statement.
at other factors, such as how property values were affected
You should write, “Bees provide support services by by location relative to these services — for example, ocean-
pollinating our crops.” front housing. Finally, they considered how much time or
Merely writing, “Bees provide provisioning services” is money people were willing to spend to use these services —
too vague, and won’t receive credit. for example, whether they were willing to pay a fee to visit
a national park. Using this method, researchers estimated
that ecosystem services were worth over $125 trillion per
year, which is about twice the entire global economy. This
Cultural Services underscores the importance of preserving ecosystem ser-
Ecosystems provide cultural or aesthetic benefits to many vices to maintain a sustainable planet.
people. The awe-inspiring beauty of nature has instrumen-
®
tal value because it provides an aesthetic benefit for which AP Exam Tip
people are willing to pay ( FIGURE 9.4 ). Similarly, scientific

funding agencies may award grants to scientists for research When answering an economic question on the exam,
that explores biodiversity with no promise of any economic make sure to use language that indicates economic
costs such as “money,” “jobs,” or “tourism,” to name
a few. Implying economic impact without using the
correct terminology will not score you points.

9-2 How can human activities disrupt ecosystem
services?

Human activities can disrupt

ecosystem services with economic
and ecological consequences

Because biodiversity helps determine the services that eco-
systems can provide, we would expect declines in genetic
diversity, species diversity, and habitat diversity to be asso-
ciated with declines in ecosystem services. While we will
discuss declines in biodiversity in much more detail in
Module 59 here we will focus on how human activities can
,
impact ecosystem services and have economic and ecologi-

FIGURE 9.4 Cultural services. Many natural areas, such as cal consequences.
this scene from the Grand Tetons National Park, provide aes- To assess the state of ecosystem services, teams of scien-
thetic beauty valued by humans. (Buddy Mays/Alamy Stock Photo)
tists from around the world have worked together to conduct
108 UNIT 2 ■ The Living World: Biodiversity
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Not for redistribution.

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