Freshwater ecosystem services and functions

Freshwater ecosystems provide many ecosystem services for people who use them directly as well as indirectly both through using wetland products and through passive activities associated with the existence of the ecosystem. Despite these benefits being widely recognized through international processes and national or local analyses, many freshwater ecosystems are still being degraded or destroyed. In many cases, there is limited understanding of the basic ecological functions that support the services that benefit so many people. With these situations in mind an appraisal of how to measure ecosystem services and functions is provided, building on the approaches presented by the Ramsar Convention approximately a decade earlier, and accompanied by a review of open-access toolkits for measuring or evaluating ecosystem services. A river catchment in eastern Australia is used as an example to illustrate the type of changes that have occurred in freshwater ecosystem services.