Abstract
Ecosystem services (ES) are growing fields of research. It helps to provide an inherent way to understand the synergy and trade-offs between human beings and their natural environment. Regulatory ecosystem services (RES) are significantly important to maintaining the world in which people can live, and control the negative effects of flood, disasters, and diseases. It can also provide regulatory services like ecosystem protection, human safety, and the provision of other ES. However, emerging ES decision-making agendas focus on ES that is tangible and has a direct link with human well-being. Thus, the attention given to RES is low due to its less tangible benefits and complexity to measure the benefits. Disregarding and lack of attention from policymakers and scientific community may lead to unintended risks to human well-being and significant influences on the provision of other ES. This study describes the research trends on RES, knowledge generated, and the major limitation. We concluded that though there is an exponential growth of scientific publications on ES, no adequate studies were found on RES. Also, the existed studies varied in their size and types of RES indicators covered, habitats/ecosystems, and geographic extent addressed. There was also a lack of connecting knowledge generated on the benefits of RES with the national policy of natural resource management, inconsistency of ES classification, and methodological diversity. Therefore, scientific communities are promoted to link RES studies with human health. Besides, the researcher should give priority for the least studied ecosystems and its services, developing robust methodology, and proposing management options to enhance the regulatory services of ecosystems.
Highlights
Ecosystem services (ES) are all the benefits which human can derive from the natural ecosystems for their physical, social, and economic well-being (Costanza et al 1997; Daily 1997; Millennium ecosystem assessment (MA) 2005)
Since 2010, the number of publications had increased exponentially though few publications on ES existed before 2010. This is a common trend in ES research, and the possible reason would be emerging of specific journals on ES in the mid-2000s and the existence of seminar and workshop at international level on ES (Costanza et al 2017; Liquete et al 2013; Mengist and Soromessa 2019)
After the publication of the MA report in 2005, the scientific community was inspired to conduct studies on the various benefits of ecosystems for human wellbeing. This indicates the existence of an academic interest in ES studies so as to inform policymakers to design strategies to use ecosystems sustainably
Summary
Ecosystem services (ES) are all the benefits which human can derive from the natural ecosystems for their physical, social, and economic well-being (Costanza et al 1997; Daily 1997; MA 2005). The term ES is popular in contemporary scientific research and policy agenda (Braat and de Groot 2012; Fisher et al 2009; Seppelt et al 2011) This is because ES is highly valuable (Costanza et al 1997) and beneficial to families, Over the years, several typologies have emerged to categorize ES. Regulating ecosystem services (RES) are defined as “the benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes” (MA 2005). It comprises the various ways whereby the ecosystems regulate the natural environments. It helps to reduce the impacts and effects emanated from both natural and anthropogenic activities that cause risk to human health and ecosystem quality. RES has a significant effect on the provisioning capacity of other ES (Boyd and Banzhaf 2007)
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