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Nature's Benefits
Forest ecosystems are human, plant, and animal life-support systems that provide a suite of goods and services vital to human health and livelihood—essentially Nature's Benefits, also called Ecosystem Services. The Region's goal is to communicate Nature's Benefits in the context of modern-day living and connect California National Forest land management activities to benefits that the public, sees, feels, and hears.
Ecosystem services are the benefits people receive and value from nature—or "Nature's Benefits." This comprehensive suite of benefits provided by healthy ecosystems includes, but is not limited to:
- clean air
- water filtration
- carbon sequestration
- cultural heritage
- pollination
- meadows and flood control
- jobs, commerce, and value to local economies
- recreational opportunities and open space for communities
- renewable and nonrenewable energy
- increased physical and psychological wellness
- wood products
Watch a video titled " Econ 120: Ecosystem Services" from NOAA Office for Coastal Management.
You may learn more about Nature's Benefits in Region 5 by selecting any of the following titles.
Region 5 manages more than 20 million acres of forests and grasslands across California which:
- sustain almost 24 million annual visitors and over 40 million California residents;
- more than half the state's water supply or the equivalent of over 11 trillion gallons of water flows from National Forest upper watersheds; has a $3.2B annual value of water market wholesale by sector in California, a $367B cost of water to LA households using 100 gallons per day (on a monthly water bill of $100), and a cost of $583M to San Joaquin farmers per acre foot; which helps support a thriving agricultural economy that generates more than $50 billion annually.
Other critical values from California's National Forests include:
- hydroelectric power plants where more than 10,190 megawatts of installed hydro plant capacity has the ability to meet the power needs of over 7.6 million households;
- $74 million in lumber and $118 million in forest wood products;
- 1,554 million metric tons of forest carbon stocks, or more than half of the State's forest carbon, and
- More than 18,000 jobs and $715,000 in labor income (wages) generated by recreation visitors.
Nature's Benefits provide provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services that are the "natural capital" base of our nation's economies and communities.
Frequent wildland fires in California and climate change stressors, including drought and bark beetle infestation, are causing Region 5 land managers to target ecological restoration of wildlands and forests to make them more resilient to these disturbances.
By integrating Nature's Benefits analysis into forest policy, management, and research, we hope to strengthen the connection between National Forests and the benefits they provide, and communicate to those who benefit from them in ways that they value. Understanding how to quantify and qualify Nature's Benefits will allow us to assess landscape change over time, review and understand tradeoffs from management actions as well as communicate the benefits that come from
To restore forest health, we need to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration across the state. Communicating the Nature’s Benefits from California’s National Forests and sharing a stewardship vision to bring more resources to bear for restoration, can sustain these benefits for future generations.
1. Land Managers in the Region are working together with partners across all land boundaries to accelerate ecological restoration in order to maximize and sustain the critical benefits from nature that people have come to rely on in their daily lives.
- Efforts are being directed at sustaining or increasing the volume and reliability of the essential flow of natural resources and ecosystem services that are valued and used by people, including wood, fiber, water, air and water purification, flood and climate regulation, biodiversity, scenic landscapes, cultural sites, recreation opportunities, wildlife habitat, and carbon sequestration and storage.
2. Forest-level restoration activities not only seek to bolster and maintain Nature's Benefits that are quantifiable and physical in nature, such as water, air, and carbon, but also benefits that are cultural and include social and economic advantages.
- Cultural values such as recreation, solitude, spiritual experience and aesthetic values are critical to both social values and community economies because they contribute to the overall wellness of human beings and their livelihoods.
- Memories are created from recreating and spending time amongst the aesthetics associated with healthy forests creating significant value to families and communities.
- Wellness associated with exercise and the outdoors provides both social and economic values for both communities and the local economy (emphasis on recreation industry).
- Traditions associated with ceremonial and non-ceremonial activities on the forest are built and revisited as part of tribal life.
3. To address these values, the Region is exploring innovative solutions and partnerships to leverage its own work and accelerate the pace and scale of restoration so that Nature's Benefits may be sustained and strengthened.
- Working together with federal, state, local, and private landowners, the Region hopes to discuss and review trade-offs and decisions that will ultimately make people's lives better.
- The Region is also looking for scalable models.
4. By communicating the value of California's forests we can strengthen people's connections to the land and Nature's Benefits.
- Positive benefits from the National Forests in California not only impact people's lives now and future generations
- Ultimately incentivizing citizen-stewardship and volunteerism on California's forests, as well as bring offers of important resources.
Related Information
- WRI article: Investors Think They Can Make Money Reducing Wildfire Risk. A Forest Restoration Project in Yuba, CA Puts this Idea into Practice
- FS National Ecosystem Services
- Nature's Benefits Story Map
- Nature's Benefits Animation
- Conservation Finance
Do you have any idea just how valuable chaparral is? Most of us don't realize that these often overlooked lands provide essential benefits worth billions of dollars. The four southernmost forests in California actually contain more chaparral shrubland than forest. This animation describes the benefits and values of these often under-appreciated lands.