Ecosystem services - assessment endpoints for scientific investigations

摘要

Traditionally, risk and other assessments of the effects of chemical pollution or other stressors on ecosystems have focused on assessing impacts to ecosystem health, in particular biodiversity. This has been an essentially altruistic vision of the non-human species that make up ecosystems as worthy of protection for their own sake, independent of benefits to human beings. Unfortunately, altruism is not a common human characteristic, as evidenced by continued human degradation of the natural environment (e.g., over-harvesting both on land and in the waters; continued inputs of potentially toxic contaminants to the environment; habitat changes due to human development; etc.).