ES 250: Principles of Sustainability

Hi there! This guide was created specifically for Environmental Studies 250: Principles of Sustainability. The resources listed here will help you complete your final project. If you need assistance, please contact librarian Amanda Melcher at melcheras@montevallo.edu or 205-665-6104 

Assignment (Final Project): The final project will consist of a 300-word abstract and 12-minute presentation (accompanied by slide show and/or other visual aid). Projects are to identify a specific ecosystem service, introduce its regional environmental and social context, and address contemporary issues of sustainable use.

Use the menu on the left side of this page to navigate through this guide and learn more.

Ecosystem services are commonly defined as the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. Ecosystem services include basic services - provisioning services like the delivery of food, fresh water, wood and fiber, and medicine - and services that are less tangible and harder to measure but equally critical: regulating services like carbon sequestration, erosion control, and pollination; cultural services like recreation, ecotourism, and educational and spiritual values; and supporting services like nutrient cycling, soil formation, and primary productivity.

Four types:

1. Provisioning Services: When people are asked to identify a service provided by nature, most think of food. Fruits, vegetables, trees, fish, and livestock are available to us as direct products of ecosystems. A provisioning service is any type of benefit to people that can be extracted from nature.

2. Regulating Services: A regulating service is the benefit provided by ecosystem processes that moderate natural phenomena. Regulating services include pollination, decomposition, water purification, erosion and flood control, and carbon storage and climate regulation.

3. Cultural Services: A cultural service is a non-material benefit that contributes to the development and cultural advancement of people, including how ecosystems play a role in local, national, and global cultures; the building of knowledge and the spreading of ideas; creativity born from interactions with nature (music, art, architecture); and recreation.

4. Supporting Services: Ecosystems themselves couldn't be sustained without the consistency of underlying natural processes, such as photosynthesis, nutrient cycling, the creation of soils, and the water cycle. These processes allow the Earth to sustain basic life forms, let alone whole ecosystems and people. Without supporting services, provisional, regulating, and cultural services wouldn't exist.

US Forest Service and NWF