The May issue of Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability (vol. 2 (1-2)) is entirely dedicated to ‘Biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being’.
The editorial overview states: <quote>
Looking back, it is quite clear that biodiversity science has been evolving quickly over these past two decades. The field has moved from a focus on systematics and taxonomy in the 1970–80s, to a more dynamic view of biodiversity’s role in ecosystem functioning throughout the 1990s. The early 2000s and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment have placed biodiversity within the context of ecosystem services and human well-being, and some efforts are currently focusing on putting this concept into practice, and on valuing and mapping ecosystem services in order to shed light on economic and environmental consequences of decisions. These various chronological developments have not happened at the expense of one other and all fields have remained active and complementary. Some of the papers presented in this issue illustrate well the breadth of the issues that are currently being explored in biodiversity and ecosystem service science. Examples include an overview of the outstanding diversity of the Cape region, a study of the role of tree diversity in forest ecosystem functioning, a presentation of scientific challenges for a new agriculture reconciling biodiversity conservation and food security, or a discussion on the importance of considering biodiversity as a source of ‘evolutionary services’, that is, as a source of options for society’s future choices. <unquote>
This issue is freely available full-text. Click here to see the table of contents.
The Agrobiodiversity Grapevine 