Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functions and Services: Interrelationship With Environment and Human Health

Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are fundamental and crucial to environmental health while also providing indispensable benefits to human wellbeing through the provision of clean water, food, fresh air, and the suppression of disease-causing microorganisms. Anthropogenic global disturbances including global warming, land-use change, and invasive species are resulting in losses of biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and hence ecosystem services. There is an urgent need for interdisciplinary and collaborative research to gain a more robust understanding of the interactive mechanisms that define relationships between environmental health and human health. Promoting robustness of biodiversity and complexity of ecosystem functioning enhances the provision of ecosystem services, which in turn serves to benefit human health.

Ecosystem health and biodiversity are fundamental assets in ecological science and are crucial to society and human health. Overarching goals include but are not limited to:

• Gaining a better understanding of the relationships between biological diversity, ecosystem functioning/services with human health and assessing their ecological and evolutionary implications;
• Studying longer-term integration into biodiversity, urban green-space networks, environmental health, and human health;
• Investigating multiple positive effects of ecosystem services for benefiting human health;
• Social and economic impacts of biodiversity and ecosystem functions on psychological benefits and the physical health of human beings


We welcome a range of article types (including research papers, reviews, mini-reviews, and opinions) that address the previously mentioned subjects, but also contributions that are beyond but cross with these areas.