The Biosphere: Goods and Services

A life-support system that provides goods and services

The biosphere includes all the parts of Earth where life exists. People depend on it both for resources they can collect and for natural processes that keep their surroundings suitable for life.

Goods are tangible products, such as food, timber and water. Services are benefits supplied by the functioning of ecosystems, such as maintaining fertile soils and regulating water flows. Providing goods is itself often called a provisioning service. The distinction is useful: a tree can provide wood, but while it is growing it also takes in carbon dioxide, protects soil and intercepts rainfall.

Some benefits are immediately local, such as firewood used by a household. Others are globally important: carbon stored in vegetation and soils affects the atmosphere shared by everyone.

Resources for Indigenous and other local people

Many Indigenous and other local communities depend directly on surrounding ecosystems for their everyday needs. Four important resource categories are:

• Food: fish, hunted animals, fruit, nuts, berries and honey provide food without necessarily replacing natural vegetation with farmland.
• Medicine: plants provide substances used to treat illness or injury. For example, aloe vera is used to soothe skin conditions.
• Building materials: timber, branches, leaves and plant fibres can be used to make shelters, roofs and household items.
• Fuel: wood and shrubs can be burnt for cooking and heating; dried animal dung is another fuel used by some communities.

The Awá of the Amazon illustrate these connections. They use branches and palm leaves to build shelters called Tapāí, palm fibres to make rope and hammocks, and wood for fires. Their food includes honey collected from nests in trees, fish, açaí berries and hunted animals such as tapir and deer. A forest therefore supports several parts of daily life, rather than supplying just one product.

These examples are not a description of every Indigenous community. The resources people use depend on their environment, knowledge and ways of life.

Commercial exploitation: resources for sale and profit

The biosphere is also increasingly exploited commercially. Logging and agriculture supply timber and food to wider markets, while energy production, water extraction and mining use or transform ecosystems on a larger scale.

Energy resources include fuelwood and crops grown for biofuels, as well as fossil fuels extracted beneath ecosystems. Hydroelectric power uses flowing water to generate electricity. However, creating a dam and reservoir can require forest clearance and flood habitats. Dams can also obstruct migrating fish and trap sediment that would otherwise move downstream.

Water resources are taken from rivers and groundwater for farming, industry and settlements. Excessive extraction leaves less water for ecosystems such as wetlands, threatening the plants and animals that depend on them.

Mineral resources include copper used in cables and machinery, and gold used in jewellery and dentistry. Minerals are not produced by living organisms, but extracting them can disrupt the biosphere above and around a deposit. Mines and access roads can replace habitats, while chemicals used in extraction can pollute rivers and affect wildlife and human health.

Commercial use can provide valuable goods and electricity, but damaging ecosystems may reduce the resources available to local people and weaken the services on which everyone depends.

Regulating the atmosphere through carbon exchange

Gases are continually exchanged between living organisms and the atmosphere. During photosynthesis, plants absorb carbon dioxide and use its carbon to build living material. Carbon passes to animals when they eat plants, or other animals. Respiration by organisms returns some carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

When organisms die, decomposition returns some carbon to the atmosphere and transfers some into the soil. Vegetation and soils therefore store carbon; where they take in more than they release, they act as carbon sinks. These processes help regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide, which influences climate.

Deforestation weakens this regulation. Removing trees reduces carbon dioxide uptake, while burning vegetation releases stored carbon. Burning fossil fuels also transfers long-stored carbon into the atmosphere. The effects extend beyond the cleared area because atmospheric gases circulate globally.

Maintaining soil health by recycling nutrients

Plants take nutrients from the soil and incorporate them into their tissues. Fallen leaves, dead organisms and animal waste add organic matter to the ground. Decomposers break this material down, returning nutrients that plants can absorb again. This nutrient cycle helps maintain soil fertility and supports future plant growth, including crops.

Vegetation also helps protect the soil surface. Clearance removes this protection and reduces the supply of dead organic matter. Rain can wash away litter and erode soil, while water moving through the soil can carry dissolved nutrients away through leaching.

Tropical rainforests are particularly vulnerable because much of their nutrient supply is held in living vegetation. Removing that vegetation disrupts the recycling system as well as removing the trees themselves.

Regulating water within the hydrological cycle

Vegetation changes both the route and speed of water movement. Leaves and branches intercept rainfall, delaying its arrival at the ground. Water can then infiltrate the soil rather than travelling directly across the surface into rivers. Plants also return water vapour to the atmosphere through transpiration, contributing to the movement of water through the hydrological cycle.

After clearance, less rainfall is intercepted and infiltration can decrease. More water flows over the surface, reaching rivers sooner and increasing flood risk. Eroded soil can enter rivers and reduce their capacity, worsening the problem. Reduced transpiration may also make rainfall less frequent or reliable.

These services connect: vegetation helps regulate atmospheric gases, recycle soil nutrients and control water movement at the same time. Protecting the biosphere therefore protects not only useful goods but also the processes that make those goods—and human life—possible.