Linking Water Purification and Waste Treatment to Human Wellbeing

Water purification and waste treatment ecosystem services are important because they help maintain high water quality standards for human wellbeing. Aquatic ecosystems, such as riparian wetlands, lakes, rivers, estuaries, and coastal wetlands and oceans, support these ecosystem services. Water purification occurs by the removal or breakdown of excess nutrients and other pollutants in the water. These ecological processes that remove or breakdown excess nutrients and other pollutants are vast and complex. For example, wetlands like those in south Louisiana, United States, are important to improve water quality because the vegetation and soil microbes help take up the nutrients. When the wetlands become imperiled, those ecosystem services also become degraded. Thus, many valuation techniques have been developed to assist in assessing the importance of these ecosystem services. The choice of the valuation technique depends on the aspect of the human system being affected and studied. Here we present a holistic framework to better understand the role of water purification in coupled human and natural systems, and we briefly present valuation methodologies that can support environmental management.