ABSTRACT
When population centers were small and scattered, human activities often did not impair the surrounding environment. However, as human populations grew, increasing sewage loads and harvesting pressure led to local collapses in the ecosystem services upon which human society depended. Waste processing, provision of potable water, and food production are examples of ecosystem services that were pushed beyond sustainability. The inconvenience and hardship resulting from failures in ecosystem services motivated early attempts at proactive management of the environment, including prediction and mitigation of damage before the fact. The ability to predict environmental outcome has improved. However, the development of robust predictive techniques for subtle damage and larger spatial scales remains challenging.
