Regional economies depend, to varying degrees, on water-based ecosystem services. As growing populations and other pressures increasingly stress underlying ecosystems, it is imperative that society better understand the linkages between economic and ecological systems, and how policy seeks to mediate competing interests. However, detailed analysis is often beyond the reach of resource-constrained local governments. Two general principles are proposed for conceptualizing linkages between ecological and economic systems. These principles are used to reformulate an existing ecosystem services classification system, which is then applied to the Mississippi Valley watershed in Ontario, Canada, to identify areas of high economic demand for water-based ecosystem services. Incorporating upstream–downstream linkages and climate change considerations, the extant policy framework is assessed for its ability to manage these systems-based considerations, informing a discussion of how policy, property rights, and other system attributes could combine to drawdown ecological resources and undermine the opportunity for others to access needed ecosystem services. This has the potential to create feedback and exacerbate resilience challenges or, with improved understanding of policy linkages, inform countermeasures to improve ecosystem management.

区域经济在不同程度上依赖于以水为基础的生态系统服务。随着人口增长和其他压力对潜在生态系统的压力越来越大，社会必须更好地了解经济和生态系统之间的联系，以及政策如何寻求调解相互竞争的利益。然而，详细的分析往往超出了资源受限的地方政府的能力范围。提出了两个一般原则来概念化生态系统和经济系统之间的联系。这些原则用于重新制定现有的生态系统服务分类系统，然后将其应用于加拿大安大略省的密西西比河流域，以确定对水基生态系统服务的经济需求高的地区。结合上下游联系和气候变化考虑，评估现有政策框架管理这些基于系统的考虑的能力，为讨论政策、财产权和其他系统属性如何结合以减少生态资源和破坏其他人获得所需生态系统服务的机会提供信息。这有可能产生反馈并加剧复原力挑战，或者随着对政策联系的更好理解，为改善生态系统管理的对策提供信息。