Freshwater Ecosystem

Freshwater biomes are made up of lakes and ponds as well as rivers and streams. These freshwater biomes provide ecosystem services such as water for drinking water, crop irrigation, sanitation, and industry. In the study, “Global estimates of the value of ecosystems and their services in monetary units”, conducted by de Groot et al, the monetary value for each service per biome is broken down into values in international money per hectacre per year at 2007 price levels. The study evaluates provisioning services, regulating services, habitat services, and cultural services to create the total economic value of each biome. The freshwaters ecosystems primary value lies in providing water (1808 int$/ha/year)  and some food (106 int$/ha/year) as a provisioning service (1914 int$/ha/year total) and then recreation in cultural services (2166) for a total of 4267 per hectacre per year at 2007.

I was kind of surprised at how low the monetary value was for freshwater in comparison to other biomes such as Coral Reefs (total 352, 249), Coastal Systems (28,917), Coastal (193, 845) and Inland wetlands (25, 682). Then I remembered that it is based on PER hectacre PER year. Back on track… there’s obviously many more hectacres of other biomes. But I think this is a good example of the disconnect the general public has towards natural resources that we aren’t directly in contact with. Lakes, ponds, rivers and streams are built into the fabric of our lives here in Bend, so of course we would put great value on them, perhaps moreso than the ocean that we don’t see.

I would be interested in seeing how many hectacres of lakes we have in just the Cascade Lakes to get a more direct picture of what they are trying to say with numbers. I understand water as a precious resource, I really enjoyed the Intro to Water Policy class here at OSU-C. I grew up in an agricultural area and value irrigation, as well as being outside and recreating on our freshwater sources. Again, it’s interesting to see how the mind fragments water resources. Most are removed from the issues surrounding irrigation, water comes from a tap, flushes the toilet, I don’t think we connect it very well with our weekends up at the lake or our walk by the river. Our appreciation comes in pieces that don’t always connect with our actions. We may understand the value of water more in terms of real estate around it. The closer to the water, the more valuable it is. And, spending much of our summers out camping, I do understand the cultural services being a large amount of the value of this biome.

I’m actually also quite fascinated by the Great Lakes region due to the industrial usage. Their lakes are used quite differently than our lakes are. Also very fascinating to me is the Mississippi River. Our education in the Pacific Northwest is great for building a sense of pride in our beautiful region, we sing songs about the Columbia River as we grow up and learn about our area. There are other areas who face water crisis’ and conflicts that we need to learn about, so we can learn from them. I think that in order to understand the importance of the dollar value of water, there has to be a greater awareness of the connection between water and it’s services to not only our lives, but of those around us as well.