Determinación de la capacidad ecosistémica de los servicios ambientales de provisión en el Ecuador

Abstract

The aim of the current research was to determine the ecosystem capacity in the provision of environmental services in Ecuador; this was carried out through an exploratory research of: Development and Land Management Plans, theses, journal articles and reports, which allowed listing the existing ecosystems in the country. Five ecosystem evaluation parameters were proposed like endemism, flora, fauna, fragility and conservation priority; then, it was necessary to assign a rating and an average to these parameters in order to determine the importance of each one. The categories and subcategories of environmental services were also evaluated using the ecosystem qualification parameters. 45 ecosystems were identified for the Highlands, 25 for the Coastal and 21 for the Amazon region. The most important ecosystems are related to the moorlands, the equatorial Chocó and the Cordillera del Cóndor Kutukú due to their potential to generate provisioning, regulating and cultural services, respectively. Among the categories of environmental services with a high degree of perception in Ecuador, are: provision services and their subcategories including the provision of water, food and biodiversity, since these are tangible goods widely used by the population. As Ecuador is one of the megadiverse countries, it has a great ecosystem capacity, mainly in the provision of services, since human beings use these services as a life source. On the other hand, it allows generating economic resources in the market, which gives them a greater degree of social perception. It is recommended for future research to include the Insular region as a part of the study in order to obtain a document containing detailed information for the analysis of the ecosystem capacity in this region.