Tampa Bay Ecosystem Services
Research on the large-scale physical, chemical, and biological dynamics of coastal wetlands and estuaries, with emphasis on the Gulf of Mexico.
Tampa Bay Ecosystem Services
People use, consume, and benefit from the things that nature makes available. Many benefits come from ecosystem goods and services, such as air and water purification, the production of food, and materials for homes, clothing, and other basic needs essential to human health and well being. The ecosystem goods and services shown below contribute to social welfare or have the potential to do so in the future. Different sets of ecosystem goods and services come from natural renewable resources and processes associated with specific land uses (Production Matrix). Patterns of land use/cover and associated aquatic areas can be used to map ecosystem services across the landscape (Land Use / Land Cover). The sustainability of nature’s benefits supporting human health and well-being depends on balancing human uses with associated impacts on the regeneration of natural resources and processes Learn More 
. Learn more about sustainability and smart growth.
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Unfortunately, humanity’s need for ecosystem services (ecological footprint) currently is more than 23% larger than what the planet regenerates Learn More . What this means is that modern humans consume more of nature’s resources than can be produced; in short, our current way of life is not sustainable (World Resources Institute 2001 Learn More) .
The value of nature’s benefits is difficult to consider in environmental decision-making since ecosystem goods and services are usually not well measured or quantified in economic terms (Learn More ). The Tampa Bay Estuary Program, Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Ecosystem Services Research Program (ESRP) and our research partners offer these web pages to engage the public and potential new partners to help provide a common language and foundation for incorporating the value of, and risk of losing ecosystem services into decision making. The buttons to the left link to web pages showing mapped ecosystem services of interest and value to Tampa Bay area residents, and interesting facts about services provided by different ecosystem.