Scales of Biodiversity
The total number of different species in a given area.
What is species richness?
Direct physical goods harvested from nature like timber and crops.
What are provisions (or provisioning services)?
Non-material benefits like hiking, eco-tourism, and aesthetic beauty.
What are cultural services?
Number of global ecosystem functions found declining in the UN assessment out of 24.
What is 15?
Estimated total global monetary value of ecosystem services per year.
What is $125 trillion?
How balanced population sizes are among species in an ecosystem.
What is species evenness?
The anticancer drug derived from the Pacific yew tree's bark.
What is Taxol?
Estimated annual dollar value of crop pollination by native insects in the U.S.
What is $3 billion?
Biogeochemical cycle heavily disrupted by synthetic agricultural fertilizers.
What is the nitrogen cycle?
How many times larger global ecosystem service value is compared to the global economy.
What is twice (2 times)?
Genetic variation within a population that helps it survive diseases.
What is genetic diversity?
Gigatons of human carbon emissions absorbed annually by oceans and forests.
What is 4 gigatons?
Mountain watershed protected by NYC to save billions in water filtration costs.
What are the Catskill Mountains?
Fast-growing fish farming method that increased 527% from 1990 to 2018.
What is aquaculture?
Economic metric calculating the cost to build technology that replaces a natural service.
What is replacement value?
Species with narrow niches that suffer first during habitat loss.
What are specialist species?
Coastal ecosystem service provided by mangroves and coral reefs during storms.
What is flood/storm protection (or erosion control)?
Belief that nature has inherent worth independent of human benefit.
What is intrinsic value?
Massive Colorado River reservoir that dropped to 35% capacity in 2021.
What is Lake Mead?
Greenhouse gas released in larger amounts when rainforests are cleared for crops.
What is carbon or CO2?
An ecosystem's ability to recover after a major environmental disruption.
What is resilience?
Built-in ecosystem feature where multiple species perform the same vital function.
What is functional redundancy (or resilience)?
Underlying natural processes like soil formation and nutrient cycling.
What are supporting services?
Average number of distinct pesticide residues found inside U.S. beehives.
What is six?
Values assigned to nature based on tangible economic benefits provided to humans.
What are instrumental values?