Ecosystem Services and Resource Use - TCE Environmental Science (Tasmania)
“Describe the ecosystem services humans rely on and explain how resource use such as forestry, fishing and agriculture affects Tasmanian ecosystems.”
Ecosystem services are the benefits humans gain from nature. They are grouped into provisioning services such as food and timber, regulating services such as climate and flood control, supporting services such as soil formation and nutrient cycling, and cultural services such as recreation and identity. Resource use brings real benefits but also impacts: forestry, fishing and agriculture in Tasmania can reduce biodiversity, degrade soil and disrupt the very services society depends on.
What this dot point is asking
This dot point asks you to describe the benefits people gain from ecosystems, called ecosystem services, and to explain how using natural resources changes those ecosystems. You should classify ecosystem services, distinguish renewable from non-renewable resources, and use Tasmanian examples such as forestry, fishing and farming to show both the benefits and the impacts of resource use.
What ecosystem services are
Ecosystem services are the goods and benefits that healthy ecosystems provide to people, often for free. They are usually grouped into four categories.
- Provisioning services are tangible products such as timber, fish, fresh water and crops.
- Regulating services control natural processes, such as forests storing carbon, wetlands filtering water, and vegetation reducing flooding and erosion.
- Supporting services underpin all the others, such as photosynthesis, soil formation and nutrient cycling.
- Cultural services are non-material benefits such as recreation, tourism, spiritual value and the cultural identity many Tasmanians draw from wild places.
Because many of these services are not bought and sold, their value is easy to overlook until they are lost.
Ecosystem services are the direct and indirect benefits that humans obtain from functioning ecosystems, including the provision of resources, the regulation of natural processes, and cultural and supporting roles.
Renewable and non-renewable resources
A renewable resource can replenish itself within a human timescale if it is not used too fast, such as timber, fish stocks, fresh water and solar energy. A non-renewable resource exists in a fixed amount or forms far too slowly to replace, such as the minerals mined on Tasmania's west coast and fossil fuels. The central challenge is that even renewable resources behave like non-renewable ones if they are harvested faster than they can recover.
Forestry in Tasmania
Tasmania's forests provide timber, jobs and regional income, and they also deliver major regulating and supporting services by storing carbon, protecting catchments and sheltering biodiversity. Native-forest logging, especially clear-felling, can reduce habitat for species such as the swift parrot and the masked owl, increase erosion and change water flows. Plantations and regrowth can restore some services, but a young plantation does not match the structural complexity or carbon store of an old-growth forest. Sustainable forestry tries to balance timber yield against the long-term services the forest provides.
Fisheries
Tasmanian fisheries, including rock lobster, abalone and aquaculture such as Atlantic salmon, are economically important. Wild fisheries can be overharvested if catch exceeds the rate at which stocks reproduce, reducing the resource and harming the wider food web. Salmon aquaculture provides food and jobs but can affect water quality, the seabed and surrounding marine life if nutrient waste is not managed, showing how a provisioning service can erode regulating and supporting services.
Agriculture
Farming in regions such as the Midlands and the north-west supplies food and supports communities. Clearing native vegetation for crops and pasture reduces habitat and biodiversity, while heavy fertiliser and irrigation can degrade soil and pollute waterways. Good practice, such as retaining shelterbelts and managing runoff, helps farmland keep delivering food while protecting the supporting services of soil and water.
The reason resource use is an environmental problem is that it can damage other ecosystem services. Always link a resource use, such as clearing land, to the services it threatens, such as carbon storage, water filtration or biodiversity. That link is what high-scoring answers make explicit.
Data questions sometimes value an ecosystem's services in dollars and ask how this changes a management choice. Work through it in order.
Classify each service
Sort every listed service into provisioning, regulating, supporting or cultural. Naming the category shows you understand what each benefit is.
Total the market and non-market values
Add up the obvious market value (such as timber) and, separately, the regulating and cultural values that are usually unpriced. Comparing the two totals reveals how much hidden value is at stake.
Explain the decision shift
Argue that pricing regulating and cultural services makes their loss visible in a cost-benefit comparison. If those values exceed the provisioning value, clearing or harvesting may destroy more value than it creates.
Link to a principle
Conclude by naming improved valuation: recognising the economic worth of ecosystem services so they are not treated as free guides decisions toward sustainable use.
Bringing it together
To answer this dot point well, define ecosystem services and classify them into the four groups, distinguish renewable from non-renewable resources, and then use Tasmanian examples of forestry, fisheries and agriculture to explain how using resources both benefits society and impacts the ecosystems that supply those benefits.
Resource use is not simply good or bad. A strong answer recognises the trade-off, explaining both the benefit a resource provides and the services its use puts at risk. Examiners reward balanced, evidence-based reasoning, not one-sided claims that all logging or all fishing is harmful.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of TASC exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice8 marksA study estimated the annual value of services from a Tasmanian forest catchment: timber million, water filtration million, carbon storage million, and recreation and tourism million. Using the data, classify each service and explain why valuing services this way can change a management decision about logging the catchment.Show worked answer →
An 8 mark data-and-explain question rewards correct classification plus a reasoned argument.
- Classify each service
- Timber is a provisioning service; water filtration is a regulating service; carbon storage is a regulating service; recreation and tourism is a cultural service. (Supporting services such as soil formation underpin all of these.)
- Compare the figures
- The provisioning value from timber ( million) is the smallest single value, while the regulating and cultural services together total million, far exceeding it.
- Explain the effect on the decision
- When only the timber value is counted, logging looks attractive. Putting a dollar value on regulating and cultural services makes their loss visible, so a decision-maker can see that clearing the catchment may destroy more value than it creates. This is the principle of improved valuation guiding sustainable management.
Markers reward the four correct classifications and the argument that valuing non-market services changes the cost-benefit balance.
Practice6 marksExplain, using one Tasmanian example, how using a provisioning service can damage regulating and supporting services.Show worked answer →
A 6 mark explain question wants one clear example with the service links made explicit.
- Name the provisioning use
- Native-forest logging harvests timber, a provisioning service.
- Link to regulating services
- Removing the forest reduces carbon storage (a regulating service) by releasing stored carbon, and reduces the catchment's ability to filter water and moderate flooding.
- Link to supporting services
- Clearing exposes soil to erosion and disrupts soil formation and nutrient cycling, the supporting services that underpin future productivity.
Markers reward a single coherent example with at least one regulating and one supporting service correctly linked to the provisioning use.