Download or read book Forest Land Conversion, Ecosystem Services, and Economic Issues for Policy written by Robert A. Smail and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The continued conversion and development of forest land pose a serious threat to the ecosystem services derived from forested landscapes. There are unavoidable challenges involved in quantifying the threats from forest conversion and their related costs to human well-being: (1) most attempts to quantify the costs of forest conversion on ecosystem services will necessarily rely on specific ecological science that is often emerging, changing, or simply nonexistent; (2) given the interconnected nature of ecosystem products and processes, any attempt to quantify the effects of forest conversion must grapple with jointness in production; (3) the ecology and the human dimensions of ecosystems are highly specific to spatial-temporal circumstances.