  To completely understand the effects of urban ecosystems, the effects of
ecosystem disservices should be considered along with the ecosystem services
and require more research attention. In this study, we tried to better
understand its formation through the use of cascade flowchart and
classification systems and compare their effects with ecosystem services. It is
vitally important to differentiate final and intermediate ecosystem disservices
for understanding the negative effects of the ecosystem on human well-being.
The proposed functional classification of EDS (i.e. provisioning, regulating
and cultural EDS) should also help better bridging EDS and ES studies. In
addition, we used Beijing as a case study area to value the EDS caused by urban
ecosystems and compare the findings with ES values. The results suggested that
although EDS caused great financial loss the potential economic gain from
ecosystem services still significantly outweigh the loss. Our study only sheds
light on valuating the net effects of urban ecosystems. In the future, we
believe that EDS valuation should be at least equally considered in ecosystem
valuation studies to create more comprehensive and sustainable development
policies, land use proposals and management plans.
