Ecosystem health is a metaphor used to describe the condition of an ecosystem.[1][2] Ecosystem condition can vary as a result of fire, flooding, drought, extinctions, invasive species, climate change, mining, fishing, farming or logging, chemical spills, and a host of other reasons. There is no universally accepted benchmark for a healthy ecosystem,[3] rather the apparent health status of an ecosystem can vary depending upon which health metrics are employed in judging it[4] and which societal aspirations are driving the assessment. Advocates of the health metaphor argue for its simplicity as a communication tool. "Policy-makers and the public need simple, understandable concepts like health."[5] Some critics [6] worry that ecosystem health, a "value-laden construct", can be "passed off as science to unsuspecting policy makers and the public."[7] However, this term is often used in portraying the state of ecosystems worldwide and in conservation and management. For example, scientific journals and the UN often use the terms planetary and ecosystem health, such as the recent journal The Lancet Planetary Health.
The health metaphor applied to the environment has been in use at least since the early 1800s[8][9] and the great American conservationist Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) spoke metaphorically of land health, land sickness, mutilation, and violence when describing land use practices.[10] The term "ecosystem management" has been in use at least since the 1950s.[11] The term "ecosystem health" has become widespread in the ecological literature, as a general metaphor meaning something good,[12] and as an environmental quality goal in field assessments of rivers,[13] lakes,[14] seas,[15] and forests.[16]
Recently however this metaphor has been subject of quantitative formulation[17] using complex systems concepts such as criticality, meaning that a healthy ecosystem is in some sort of balance between adaptability (randomness) and robustness (order) . Nevertheless, the universality of criticality is still under examination and is known as the Criticality Hypothesis, which states that systems in a dynamic regime shifting between order and disorder, attain the highest level of computational capabilities and achieve an optimal trade-off between robustness and flexibility. Recent results in cell and evolutionary biology, neuroscience and computer science have great interest in the criticality hypothesis, emphasizing its role as a viable candidate general law in the realm of adaptive complex systems (see [18] and references therein).
Meaning
The term ecosystem health has been employed to embrace some suite of environmental goals deemed desirable.[19] Edward Grumbine's highly cited paper[20] "What is ecosystem management?" surveyed ecosystem management and ecosystem health literature and summarized frequently encountered goal statements:[citation needed]
Managing over long time frames to maintain evolutionary potential
Accommodating human use and occupancy within these constraints
Grumbine describes each of these goals as a "value statement" and stresses the role of human values in setting ecosystem management goals.
It is the last goal mentioned in the survey, accommodating humans, that is most contentious. "We have observed that when groups of stakeholders work to define ... visions, this leads to debate over whether to emphasize ecosystem health or human well-being ... Whether the priority is ecosystems or people greatly influences stakeholders' assessment of desirable ecological and social states."[21] and, for example, "For some, wolves are critical to ecosystem health and an essential part of nature, for others they are a symbol of government overreach threatening their livelihoods and cultural values."[22]
Fire plays a key role in ecosystem restoration, and improves ecosystem health and diversity.
Measuring ecosystem health requires extensive goal-driven environmental sampling. For example, a vision for ecosystem health of Lake Superior was developed by a public forum and a series of objectives were prepared for protection of habitat and maintenance of populations of some 70 indigenous fish species.[23] A suite of 80 lake health indicators was developed for the Great Lakes Basin including monitoring native fish species, exotic species, water levels, phosphorus levels, toxic chemicals, phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish tissue contaminants, etc.[24] Some authors have attempted broad definitions of ecosystem health, such as benchmarking as healthy the historical ecosystem state "prior to the onset of anthropogenic stress."[25] A difficulty is that the historical composition of many human-altered ecosystems is unknown or unknowable. Also, fossil and pollen records indicate that the species that occupy an ecosystem reshuffle through time, so it is difficult to identify one snapshot in time as optimum or "healthy.".[26]
A commonly cited broad definition states that a healthy ecosystem has three attributes:
While this captures significant ecosystem properties, a generalization is elusive as those properties do not necessarily co-vary in nature. For example, there is not necessarily a clear or consistent relationship between productivity and species richness.[27] Similarly, the relationship between resilience and diversity is complex, and ecosystem stability may depend upon one or a few species rather than overall diversity.[28] And some undesirable ecosystems are highly productive.[29]
"Resilience is not desirable per se. There can be highly resilient states of ecosystems which are very undesirable from some human perspectives , such as algal-dominated coral reefs."[12] Ecological resilience is a "capacity" that varies depending upon which properties of the ecosystem are to be studied and depending upon what kinds of disturbances are considered and how they are to be quantified. Approaches to assessing it "face high uncertainties and still require a considerable amount of empirical and theoretical research."[12]
Other authors have sought a numerical index of ecosystem health that would permit quantitative comparisons among ecosystems and within ecosystems over time. One such system employs ratings of the three properties mentioned above: Health = system vigor x system organization x system resilience.[30] Ecologist Glenn Suter argues that such indices employ "nonsense units," the indices have "no meaning; they cannot be predicted, so they are not applicable to most regulatory problems; they have no diagnostic power; effects of one component are eclipsed by responses of other components, and the reason for a high or low index value is unknown."[31]
Health indicators
Health metrics are determined by stakeholder goals, which drive ecosystem definition. An ecosystem is an abstraction.[32][33] "Ecosystems cannot be identified or found in nature. Instead, they must be delimited by an observer. This can be done in many different ways for the same chunk of nature, depending on the specific perspectives of interest."[12]
Ecosystem definition determines the acceptable range of variability (reference conditions) and determines measurement variables. The latter are used as indicators of ecosystem structure and function, and can be used as indicators of "health".[citation needed]
An indicator is a variable, such as a chemical or biological property, that when measured, is used to infer trends in another (unmeasured) environmental variable or cluster of unmeasured variables (the indicandum). For example, rising mortality rate of canaries in a coal mine is an indicator of rising carbon monoxide levels. Rising chlorophyll-a levels in a lake may signal eutrophication.[34]
Ecosystem assessments employ two kinds of indicators, descriptive indicators and normative indicators. "Indicators can be used descriptively for a scientific purpose or normatively for a political purpose."[35]
Used descriptively, high chlorophyll-a is an indicator of eutrophication, but it may also be used as an ecosystem health indicator. When used as a normative (health) indicator, it indicates a rank on a health scale, a rank that can vary widely depending on societal preferences as to what is desirable. A high chlorophyll-a level in a natural successionalwetland might be viewed as healthy whereas a human-impacted wetland with the same indicator value may be judged unhealthy.[36]
Estimation of ecosystem health has been criticized for intermingling the two types of environmental indicators.[35][37] A health indicator is a normative indicator, and if conflated with descriptive indicators "implies that normative values can be measured objectively, which is certainly not true. Thus, implicit values are insinuated to the reader, a situation which has to be avoided."[35]
The very act of selecting indicators of any kind is biased by the observer's perspective[38] and separation of goals from descriptions has been advocated as a step toward transparency: "A separation of descriptive and normative indicators is essential from the perspective of the philosophy of science ... Goals and values cannot be deduced directly from descriptions ... a fact that is emphasized repeatedly in the literature of environmental ethics ... Hence, we advise always specifying the definition of indicators and propose clearly distinguishing ecological indicators in science from policy indicators used for decision-making processes."[35]
And integration of multiple, possibly conflicting, normative indicators into a single measure of "ecosystem health" is problematic. Using 56 indicators, "determining environmental status and assessing marine ecosystems health in an integrative way is still one of the grand challenges in marine ecosystems ecology, research and management"[39]
Another issue with indicators is validity. Good indicators must have an independently validated high predictive value, that is high sensitivity (high probability of indicating a significant change in the indicandum) and high specificity (low probability of wrongly indicating a change). The reliability of various health metrics has been questioned[40] and "what combination of measurements should be used to evaluate ecosystems is a matter of current scientific debate."[4] Most attempts to identify ecological indicators have been correlative rather than derived from prospective testing of their predictive value[41] and the selection process for many indicators has been based upon weak evidence or has been lacking in evidence.[42]
In some cases no reliable indicators are known: "We found no examples of invertebrates successfully used in [forest] monitoring programs. Their richness and abundance ensure that they play significant roles in ecosystem function but thwart focus on a few key species." And, "Reviews of species-based monitoring approaches reveal that no single species, nor even a group of species, accurately reflects entire communities. Understanding the response of a single species may not provide reliable predictions about a group of species even when the group is comprised of a few very similar species."[43]
A trade-off between human health and the "health" of nature has been termed the "health paradox"[44] and it illuminates how human values drive perceptions of ecosystem health. Human health has benefited by sacrificing the "health" of wild ecosystems, such as dismantling and damming of wild valleys, destruction of mosquito-bearing wetlands, diversion of water for irrigation, conversion of wilderness to farmland, timber removal, and extirpation of tigers, whales, ferrets, and wolves.[citation needed]
There has been an acrimonious schism among conservationists and resource managers[45][46] over the question of whether to "ratchet back human domination of the biosphere" or whether to embrace it.[47] These two perspectives have been characterized as utilitarian vs protectionist.[48]
The utilitarian view treats human health and well-being as criteria of ecosystem health.[49] For example, destruction of wetlands to control malaria mosquitoes "resulted in an improvement in ecosystem health."[50] The protectionist view treats humans as an invasive species: "If there was ever a species that qualified as an invasive pest, it is Homo sapiens,"[33]
Proponents of the utilitarian view argue that "healthy ecosystems are characterized by their capability to sustain healthy human populations,"[1] and "healthy ecosystems must be economically viable," as it is "unhealthy" ecosystems that are likely to result in increases in contamination, infectious diseases, fires, floods, crop failures and fishery collapse.[51]
Protectionists argue that privileging of human health is a conflict of interest as humans have demolished massive numbers of ecosystems to maintain their welfare, also disease and parasitism are historically normal in pre-industrial nature.[52] Diseases and parasites promote ecosystem functioning, driving biodiversity and productivity,[53] and parasites may constitute a significant fraction of ecosystem biomass.[54]
The very choice of the word "health" applied to ecology has been questioned as lacking in neutrality in a BioScience article on responsible use of scientific language: "Some conservationists fear that these terms could endorse human domination of the planet ... and could exacerbate the shifting cognitive baseline whereby humans tend to become accustomed to new and often degraded ecosystems and thus forget the nature of the past."[55]
Criticism of the concept and proposed alternatives
Criticism of ecosystem health largely targets the failure of proponents to explicitly distinguish the normative (policy preference) dimension from the descriptive (scientific information) dimension, and has included the following:
Ecosystem health is in the eye of the beholder. It is an economic, political or ethical judgement rather than a scientific measure of environmental quality. Health ratings are shaped by the goals and preferences of environmental stakeholders.[6][56] "There is no scientific basis for demarcating ecosystem health."[57] "At the core of debates over the utility of ecosystem health is a struggle over which societal preferences will take precedence."[58]
Ecosystem health is an example of normative science, and "using normative science in policy deliberations is stealth advocacy." "Normative science is a corruption of science and should not be tolerated in the scientific community — without exception."[59]
Health is a metaphor, not a property of an ecosystem. Health is an abstraction. It implies "good", an optimum condition, but in nature ecosystems are ever-changing transitory assemblages with no identifiable optimum.[26][60]
Use of human health and well-being as a criterion of ecosystem health introduces an arrogance and a conflict of interest into environmental assessment, as human population growth has caused much environmental damage.[52][61]
Ecosystem health masquerades as an operational goal because environmental managers "may be reluctant to define their goals clearly."[2]
It is a vague concept.[12][62] It is "undefinable in a rigorous sense and is, therefore, acceptable only as conveying a vague sense of well-being."[63] "Currently there are many, often contradictory, definitions of ecosystem health,"[2] that "are open to so much abuse and misuse that they represent a threat to the environment."[6]
"There are in general no clear definitions of what proponents of the concept mean by 'ecosystem'."[12]
The public can be deceived by the term ecosystem health which may camouflage the ramifications of a policy goal and be employed to pejoratively rank policy choices.[2] "The most pervasive misuse of ecosystem health and similar normative notions is insertion of personal values under the guise of 'scientific' impartiality."[58]
Alternatives have been proposed for the term ecosystem health, including more neutral language such as ecosystem status,[64] ecosystem prognosis, and ecosystem sustainability.[65] Another alternative to the use of a health metaphor is to "express exactly and clearly the public policy and the management objective", to employ habitat descriptors and real properties of ecosystems.[31][6][2] An example of a policy statement is "The maintenance of viable natural populations of wildlife and ecological functions always takes precedence over any human use of wildlife."[66] An example of a goal is "Maintain viable populations of all native species in situ."[20] An example of a management objective is "Maintain self-sustaining populations of lake whitefish within the range of abundance observed during 1990-99."[23]
Kurt Jax[12] presented an ecosystem assessment format that avoids imposing a preconceived notion of normality, that avoids the muddling of normative and descriptive, and that gives serious attention to ecosystem definition. (1) Societal purposes for the ecosystem are negotiated by stakeholders, (2) a functioning ecosystem is defined with emphasis on phenomena relevant to stakeholder goals, (3) benchmark reference conditions and permissible variation of the system are established, (4) measurement variables are chosen for use as indicators, and (5) the time scale and spatial scale of assessment are decided.
Related terms
Ecological health has been used as a medical term in reference to human allergy and multiple chemical sensitivity[67] and as a public health term for programs to modify health risks (diabetes, obesity, smoking, etc.).[68][69] Human health itself, when viewed in its broadest sense, is viewed as having ecological foundations.[70] It is also an urban planning term in reference to "green" cities (composting, recycling),[71] and has been used loosely with regard to various environmental issues, and as the condition of human-disturbed environmental sites.[72] Ecosystem integrity implies a condition of an ecosystem exposed to a minimum of human influence.[72]Ecohealth is the relationship of human health to the environment, including the effect of climate change, wars, food production, urbanization, and ecosystem structure and function.[73]Ecosystem management and ecosystem-based management refer to the sustainable management of ecosystems and in some cases may employ the terms ecosystem health or ecosystem integrity as a goal.[74] The practice of natural resource management has evolved as societal priorities have changed and, as a consequence, the working definition of ecosystem health, along with the overall management goals, have evolved as well.[75]
Related Research Articles
Natural capital is the world's stock of natural resources, which includes geology, soils, air, water and all living organisms. Some natural capital assets provide people with free goods and services, often called ecosystem services. All of these underpin our economy and society, and thus make human life possible.
Human ecology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The philosophy and study of human ecology has a diffuse history with advancements in ecology, geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, zoology, epidemiology, public health, and home economics, among others.
Agroecology is an academic discipline that studies ecological processes applied to agricultural production systems. Bringing ecological principles to bear can suggest new management approaches in agroecosystems. The term can refer to a science, a movement, or an agricultural practice. Agroecologists study a variety of agroecosystems. The field of agroecology is not associated with any one particular method of farming, whether it be organic, regenerative, integrated, or industrial, intensive or extensive, although some use the name specifically for alternative agriculture.
Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an interdisciplinary subject drawing on natural and social sciences, and the practice of natural resource management.
A land ethic is a philosophy or theoretical framework about how, ethically, humans should regard the land. The term was coined by Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) in his A Sand County Almanac (1949), a classic text of the environmental movement. There he argues that there is a critical need for a "new ethic", an "ethic dealing with human's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it".
Ecological health is a term that has been used in relation to both human health and the condition of the environment.
Information ecology is the application of ecological concepts for modeling the information society. It considers the dynamics and properties of the increasingly dense, complex and important digital informational environment. "Information ecology" often is used as metaphor, viewing the information space as an ecosystem, the information ecosystem.
Ecosystem valuation is an economic process which assigns a value to an ecosystem and/or its ecosystem services. By quantifying, for example, the human welfare benefits of a forest to reduce flooding and erosion while sequestering carbon, providing habitat for endangered species, and absorbing harmful chemicals, such monetization ideally provides a tool for policy-makers and conservationists to evaluate management impacts and compare a cost-benefit analysis of potential policies. However, such valuations are estimates, and involve the inherent quantitative uncertainty and philosophical debate of evaluating a range non-market costs and benefits.
Ecological engineering uses ecology and engineering to predict, design, construct or restore, and manage ecosystems that integrate "human society with its natural environment for the benefit of both".
Ecosystem services are the various benefits that humans derive from healthy ecosystems. These ecosystems, when functioning well, offer such things as provision of food, natural pollination of crops, clean air and water, decomposition of wastes, or flood control. Ecosystem services are grouped into four broad categories of services. There are provisioning services, such as the production of food and water. Regulating services, such as the control of climate and disease. Supporting services, such as nutrient cycles and oxygen production. And finally there are cultural services, such as spiritual and recreational benefits. Evaluations of ecosystem services may include assigning an economic value to them.
Regime shifts are large, abrupt, persistent changes in the structure and function of ecosystems, the climate, financial systems or other complex systems. A regime is a characteristic behaviour of a system which is maintained by mutually reinforced processes or feedbacks. Regimes are considered persistent relative to the time period over which the shift occurs. The change of regimes, or the shift, usually occurs when a smooth change in an internal process (feedback) or a single disturbance triggers a completely different system behavior. Although such non-linear changes have been widely studied in different disciplines ranging from atoms to climate dynamics, regime shifts have gained importance in ecology because they can substantially affect the flow of ecosystem services that societies rely upon, such as provision of food, clean water or climate regulation. Moreover, regime shift occurrence is expected to increase as human influence on the planet increases – the Anthropocene – including current trends on human induced climate change and biodiversity loss. When regime shifts are associated with a critical or bifurcation point, they may also be referred to as critical transitions.
In the applied sciences, normative science is a type of information that is developed, presented, or interpreted based on an assumed, usually unstated, preference for a particular outcome, policy or class of policies or outcomes. Regular or traditional science does not presuppose a policy preference, but normative science, by definition, does. Common examples of such policy preferences are arguments that pristine ecosystems are preferable to human altered ones, that native species are preferable to nonnative species, and that higher biodiversity is preferable to lower biodiversity.
Ecological indicators are used to communicate information about ecosystems and the impact human activity has on ecosystems to groups such as the public or government policy makers. Ecosystems are complex and ecological indicators can help describe them in simpler terms that can be understood and used by non-scientists to make management decisions. For example, the number of different beetle taxa found in a field can be used as an indicator of biodiversity.
Biological integrity is associated with how "pristine" an environment is and its function relative to the potential or original state of an ecosystem before human alterations were imposed. Biological integrity is built on the assumption that a decline in the values of an ecosystem's functions are primarily caused by human activity or alterations. The more an environment and its original processes are altered, the less biological integrity it holds for the community as a whole. If these processes were to change over time naturally, without human influence, the integrity of the ecosystem would remain intact. The integrity of the ecosystem relies heavily on the processes that occur within it because those determine what organisms can inhabit an area and the complexities of their interactions. Most of the applications of the notion of biological integrity have addressed aquatic environments, but there have been efforts to apply the concept to terrestrial environments. Determining the pristine condition of the ecosystem is in theory scientifically derived, but deciding which of the many possible states or conditions of an ecosystem is the appropriate or desirable goal is a political or policy decision and is typically the focus of policy and political disagreements. Ecosystem health is a related concept but differs from biological integrity in that the "desired condition" of the ecosystem or environment is explicitly based on the values or priorities of society.
In ecology, resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a perturbation or disturbance by resisting damage and subsequently recovering. Such perturbations and disturbances can include stochastic events such as fires, flooding, windstorms, insect population explosions, and human activities such as deforestation, fracking of the ground for oil extraction, pesticide sprayed in soil, and the introduction of exotic plant or animal species. Disturbances of sufficient magnitude or duration can profoundly affect an ecosystem and may force an ecosystem to reach a threshold beyond which a different regime of processes and structures predominates. When such thresholds are associated with a critical or bifurcation point, these regime shifts may also be referred to as critical transitions.
Ecosystem-based management is an environmental management approach that recognizes the full array of interactions within an ecosystem, including humans, rather than considering single issues, species, or ecosystem services in isolation. It can be applied to studies in the terrestrial and aquatic environments with challenges being attributed to both. In the marine realm, they are highly challenging to quantify due to highly migratory species as well as rapidly changing environmental and anthropogenic factors that can alter the habitat rather quickly. To be able to manage fisheries efficiently and effectively it has become increasingly more pertinent to understand not only the biological aspects of the species being studied, but also the environmental variables they are experiencing. Population abundance and structure, life history traits, competition with other species, where the stock is in the local food web, tidal fluctuations, salinity patterns and anthropogenic influences are among the variables that must be taken into account to fully understand the implementation of a "ecosystem-based management" approach. Interest in ecosystem-based management in the marine realm has developed more recently, in response to increasing recognition of the declining state of fisheries and ocean ecosystems. However, due to a lack of a clear definition and the diversity involved with the environment, the implementation has been lagging. In freshwater lake ecosystems, it has been shown that ecosystem-based habitat management is more effective for enhancing fish populations than management alternatives.
Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) describes indigenous and other traditional knowledge of local resources. As a field of study in Northern American anthropology, TEK refers to "a cumulative body of knowledge, belief, and practice, evolving by accumulation of TEK and handed down through generations through traditional songs, stories and beliefs. It is concerned with the relationship of living beings with their traditional groups and with their environment." Indigenous knowledge is not a universal concept among various societies, but is referred to a system of knowledge traditions or practices that are heavily dependent on "place". Such knowledge is used in natural resource management as a substitute for baseline environmental data in cases where there is little recorded scientific data, or may complement Western scientific methods of ecological management.
Ecosystem management is an approach to natural resource management that aims to ensure the long-term sustainability and persistence of an ecosystem's function and services while meeting socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs. Although indigenous communities have employed sustainable ecosystem management approaches implicitly for millennia, ecosystem management emerged explicitly as a formal concept in the 1990s from a growing appreciation of the complexity of ecosystems and of humans' reliance and influence on natural systems.
Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. Further, these issues can be caused by humans or they can be natural. These issues are considered serious when the ecosystem cannot recover in the present situation, and catastrophic if the ecosystem is projected to certainly collapse.
Ecological assessment (EA) implies the monitoring of ecological resources, to discover the current and changing conditions. EAs are required components of most hazardous waste site investigations. Such assessments, in conjunction with contamination and human health risk assessments, help to evaluate the environmental hazards posed by contaminated sites and to determine remediation requirements.
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