Forest Land Conversion, Ecosystem Services, and Economic Issues for Policy: A Review
- ISBN-10
- 1437928315
- ISBN-13
- 9781437928310
- Category
- Cutover lands
- Pages
- 40
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2010-10
- Publisher
- DIANE Publishing
- Author
- Robert A. Smail
Description
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.
