The Nature Conservancy, 1917 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98101, USA.
J Environ Manage. 2011 Oct;92(10):2403-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2011.06.040. Epub 2011 Jul 18.
Interest in ecosystem services has grown tremendously among a wide range of sectors, including government agencies, NGO's and the business community. Ecosystem services entailing freshwater (e.g. flood control, the provision of hydropower, and water supply), as well as carbon storage and sequestration, have received the greatest attention in both scientific and on-the-ground applications. Given the newness of the field and the variety of tools for predicting water-based services, it is difficult to know which tools to use for different questions. There are two types of freshwater-related tools--traditional hydrologic tools and newer ecosystem services tools. Here we review two of the most prominent tools of each type and their possible applications. In particular, we compare the data requirements, ease of use, questions addressed, and interpretability of results among the models. We discuss the strengths, challenges and most appropriate applications of the different models. Traditional hydrological tools provide more detail whereas ecosystem services tools tend to be more accessible to non-experts and can provide a good general picture of these ecosystem services. We also suggest gaps in the modeling toolbox that would provide the greatest advances by improving existing tools.
人们对生态系统服务的兴趣在包括政府机构、非政府组织和企业界在内的广泛领域中迅速增长。生态系统服务包括淡水（例如洪水控制、水力发电供应和供水）以及碳储存和固存，在科学和实地应用中都受到了极大的关注。鉴于该领域的新颖性以及用于预测水相关服务的各种工具，很难知道针对不同问题应该使用哪些工具。有两种与淡水相关的工具——传统水文工具和较新的生态系统服务工具。在这里，我们回顾了每种类别中两种最突出的工具及其可能的应用。特别是，我们比较了模型之间的数据要求、易用性、解决的问题和结果的可解释性。我们讨论了不同模型的优势、挑战和最合适的应用。传统的水文工具提供了更详细的信息，而生态系统服务工具则更容易为非专家所使用，并且可以很好地概括这些生态系统服务。我们还提出了建模工具包中的差距，通过改进现有工具可以提供最大的进展。
