Ecosystem Services

Trees and forests provide benefits crucial to your well-being. Forests purify the air you breathe, the water you drink, and provide diverse wildlife habitat.  

Forest benefits are called ecosystem services. Common ecosystem services are food, wood, carbon sequestration, pollination, recreation, and soil formation. 

There are four major types of ecosystem services which include: 

  • Provisioning services, which include raw material like wood to build homes, water, food, and medicinal resources. 
  • Regulatory services like clean air, flood control, carbon sequestration, or pollination.  
  • Supporting services that maintain fundamental ecosystem processes and support wildlife habitats and biological diversity. 
  • Cultural services like soil formation, recreation, or nutrient cycling are things that benefit everybody.

In addition to the $25 billion in provisioning services provided annually from Texas forests, Texas’ forests and urban tree canopy also annually provides:

  • $17B

    Biodiversity

  • $10B

    Climate mitigation

  • $68B

    Cultural

  • $14B

    Water resources

  • $3B

    Direct human health benefits

All these benefits fall under ecosystem services, but not all services have a clear, explicit market for their “products”. 

Ecosystem service markets

Ecosystem service markets establish value for services provided by forests and other natural ecosystems. These markets allow landowners to receive income for implementing conservation forestry practices and managing a healthy and vigorous forest that produces benefits.  

Some of the more popular emerging markets in Texas include: 

Biodiversity markets

Biodiversity markets focus on habitat conservation and restoration projects designed to lessen the impact on biodiversity by activities. They are driven by a regulatory policy of “no net loss.”  

Impacts can be offset by buying credits from conservation or mitigation banks that house wetlands, streams, and threatened/endangered species. 

Learn about how the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities support sustainable forestry and strengthen communities through innovative solutions.

Carbon markets

Carbon is a natural element that is a building block for all living things. Forests can sequester carbon from the atmosphere into their tissue and the soil below. This service can be traded on a carbon market. 

Carbon markets, either voluntary or compliance based, focus on reducing or offsetting greenhouse gas emissions. Offsets are the reduction, avoidance, or sequestration of one metric ton of carbon dioxide. Forests can generate offsets that can be traded on these markets. 

Watershed markets

Watershed markets and payments direct money to natural water infrastructure for water quality and quantity. Watersheds often suffer from sedimentation and runoff of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Water markets aid the delivery of clean and reliable drinking water, manage storm water and flood control, or improve water quality as directed by regulatory policy. 

Visit Forests and Water Relationships for more information. 

Additional resources

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