on three arguments: Pivotal cultural values attaching to the natural/cultivated environment rely on an area's unique character that cannot be addressed by methods that use universal scientific parameters to determine ecological structures and functions. If a natural/cultivated environment has symbolic meanings and cultural values the object of these values are not ecosystems but shaped phenomena like mountains, lakes, forests, and, mainly, symbolic landscapes. Cultural values do result not from properties produced by ecosystems but are the product of a specific way of seeing within the given cultural framework of symbolic experience. The Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) is a classification scheme developed to accounting systems (like National counts etc.), in order to avoid double-counting of Supporting Services with others Provisioning and Regulating Services. Supporting services These may be redundant with regulating services in some categorisations, but include services such as, but not limited to, nutrient cycling, primary production, soil formation, habitat provision. These services make it possible for the ecosystems to continue providing services such as food supply, flood regulation, and water purification. Slade et al. outline the situation where a greater number of species would maximize more ecosystem services Ecology Understanding of ecosystem services requires a strong foundation in ecology, which describes the underlying principles and interactions of organisms and the environment. Since the scales at which these entities interact can vary from microbes to landscapes, milliseconds to millions of years, one of the greatest remaining challenges is the descriptive characterization of energy and material flow between them. For example, the area of a forest floor, the detritus upon it, the micro organisms in the soil, the soil biodiversity, and characteristics of the soil itself will all contribute to the abilities of that forest for providing ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, water purification, and erosion prevention to other areas within the watershed. Note that it is often possible for multiple services to be bundled together and when benefits of targeted objectives are secured, there may also be ancillary benefits—the same forest may provide habitat for other organisms as well as human recreation, which are also ecosystem services. The complexity of Earth's ecosystems poses a challenge for scientists as they try to understand how relationships are interwoven among organisms, processes and their surroundings. As it relates to human ecology, a suggested research agenda for the study of ecosystem services includes the following steps: identification of ecosystem service providers