Palmer Margaret A, Filoso Solange
Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Solomons, MD 20688, USA.
Science. 2009 Jul 31;325(5940):575-6. doi: 10.1126/science.1172976.
Ecological restoration is an activity that ideally results in the return of an ecosystem to an undisturbed state. Ecosystem services are the benefits humans derive from ecosystems. The two have been joined to support growing environmental markets with the goal of creating restoration-based credits that can be bought and sold. However, the allure of these markets may be overshadowing shortcomings in the science and practice of ecological restoration. Before making risky investments, we must understand why and when restoration efforts fall short of recovering the full suite of ecosystem services, what can be done to improve restoration success, and why direct measurement of the biophysical processes that support ecosystem services is the only way to guarantee the future success of these markets. Without new science and an oversight framework to protect the ecosystem service assets which people depend, markets could actually accelerate environmental degradation.
生态恢复是一项理想情况下能使生态系统恢复到未受干扰状态的活动。生态系统服务是人类从生态系统中获得的益处。这两者已结合起来，以支持不断发展的环境市场，目标是创造基于恢复的信用额度，可进行买卖。然而，这些市场的吸引力可能掩盖了生态恢复科学与实践中的不足。在进行风险投资之前，我们必须明白为什么以及何时恢复努力未能完全恢复整套生态系统服务，如何才能提高恢复成功率，以及为什么直接测量支持生态系统服务的生物物理过程是确保这些市场未来成功的唯一途径。如果没有新的科学以及保护人们所依赖的生态系统服务资产的监督框架，市场实际上可能会加速环境退化。
