EPA Home > Water > Wetlands, Oceans, & Watersheds > Watersheds > Watershed Academy  > Watershed Academy Web  > Ecosystem Services: Benefits supplied to human societies by natural ecosystems

The Ecological Society of America (ESA), the nation's leading professional society of ecological scientists, is an essential source of information for those addressing the many complex tasks associated with watershed management. A recently established occasional publication series, Issues in Ecology, is an especially useful resource for citizens, resource managers, policymakers, and others designing and implementing watershed approaches to environmental management. Each Issues in Ecology paper is designed to report, in language understandable by non-scientists, the consensus of a panel of scientific experts on issues relevant to the environment. Issues in Ecology reports are available on the ESA website :

Ecosystem Services: Benefits Supplied to Human Societies by Natural Ecosystems (full color PDF version, 542KB, 18 pages)

This module is one of the Watershed Academy Web Certificate Program's required modules. After you have finished it, return to this page and Click for self-test.

Many Watershed Academy Web modules link to sites outside of EPA to provide additional information. These links are marked with the following symbol and reflect the following policy on external links: Links to non-EPA sites do not imply any official EPA endorsement of or responsibility for the opinions, ideas, data, or products presented at those locations, or guarantee the validity of the information provided. Links to non-EPA servers are provided solely as a pointer to information on topics related to environmental protection that may be useful to EPA staff and the public.

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