The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment describes the following major categories of the ecosystem services — provisioning, supporting, regulating, preserving and cultural. Which one of the following is supporting service?

Answer: (c) Nutrient cycling and crop pollination

Nutrient cycling is supporting; pollination is regulating under the MEA. The historical answer pairs them.

The idea

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment sorts nature’s benefits into four groups. Three are used by people directly. The fourth, supporting, is the background work of the ecosystem that makes the other three possible; nobody uses it directly.

Supporting: soil formation, nutrient cycling, photosynthesis → makes possible → Provisioning: food, water, timber → Regulating: climate, floods, disease → Cultural: recreation, spiritual value

Why the others are wrong

(a) Food and water are provisioning services.

(b) Climate and disease control are regulating services.

(d) “Maintenance of diversity” is the preserving category the question adds.

The trap

Pollination is often called regulating. Here the question pairs it with nutrient cycling, which is clearly supporting.

Also know

The assessment was called by the UN Secretary-General and published in 2005. Its main finding was that about 60% of the ecosystem services it studied were being degraded. The question lists a fifth group, “preserving”, which is not one of the four in the assessment. The newer science body for biodiversity is IPBES (2012, Bonn).