ABSTRACT
Land is a source of sustenance, resources and “is literally the base upon which all human societies are built” (Owens and Cowell 2011). In addition to being a material base, land is charged with diverse social and cultural dimensions (Owens and Cowell 2011), while terrestrial ecosystems provide a number of ecosystem services (Daily 1997). The concept of ecosystem services is increasingly an inuential way to consider conservation and is becoming a central tool to express humanity’s need for the rest of living nature. Notwithstanding a number of denitions, the most commonly cited one is from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), which denes ecosystem services as “the benets people obtain from ecosystems” (MEA 2005). Terrestrial ecosystems provide regulating functions, for instance, for climate change; provisioning services for food, fuel, and water resources; supporting services for biodiversity and nutrient recycling; and nally, cultural, such as recreation (Figure 5.1). The capability of terrestrial ecosystems to provide these services is determined by changes in land use and land cover, socioeconomic factors, biodiversity, atmospheric composition, and climate (Metzger et al. 2006).
