Natural ecosystems provide important services upon which humans depend. Unfortunately, some people tend to believe that these services are provided by nature for free; therefore, the services have little or no value. One nearly forgotten ecosystem service is ecotherapy – the ability of interaction with nature to enhance healing and growth. While we do not pay for this service, its loss can result in a cost to humans resulting in slower recovery times, greater distress and reduced well-being. Losses in these images of nature can diminish our basic happiness. Little is understood or, at least, appreciated concerning the potential ecotherapy benefits of the natural environment and its ecosystem services. The complex and interactive relationship of ecosystems, their services and human well-being is poorly acknowledged in the broad social, philosophical, psychological and economic well-being literature. In this article, we examine the role of nature and its ecosystem services in ecotherapy and its associated enhancement of recovery from physical and mental illness through a review of studies evaluating this ecosystem service-recovery connection.

The long-term ecological impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) are compared to two extensively studied and more recent large spills: Deepwater Horizon (DWH) and the Hebei Spirit oil spill (HSOS). Each of the three spills differed in magnitude and duration of oil released, environmental conditions, ecological communities, response and clean up measures, and ecological recovery. The EVOS began on March 24, 1989, and released 40.8 million liters of Alaska North Slope crude oil into the cold, nearly pristine environment of Prince William Sound, Alaska. EVOS oiled wildlife and rocky intertidal shorelines and exposed early life stages of fish to embryotoxic levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Long-term impacts following EVOS were observed on seabirds, sea otters, killer whales, and subtidal communities. The DWH spill began on April 20, 2010, and released 507 million liters of light Louisiana crude oil from 1600 m on the ocean floor into the Gulf of Mexico over an 87-day period. The DWH spill exposed a diversity of complex aquatic communities in the deep ocean, offshore pelagic areas, and coastal environments to petroleum hydrocarbons. Large-scale persistent ecological effects included impacts to deep ocean corals, failed recruitment of oysters over multiple years, damage to coastal wetlands, and reduced dolphin, sea turtle, and seabird populations. The HSOS began on December 7, 2007, and released approximately 13 million liters of Middle East crude oils into ecologically sensitive areas of the Taean area of western Korea. Environmental conditions and the extensive initial cleanup of HSOS oil stranded on shorelines limited the long-term impacts to changes in composition and abundance of intertidal benthic communities. Comparisons of EVOS, DWH, and HSOS show the importance and complexity of the interactions among the environment, oil spill dynamics, affected ecological systems, and response actions.

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A primary objective of threatened and endangered species conservation is to ensure that chemical contaminants and other stressors do not adversely affect listed species. Assessments of the ecological risks of chemical exposures to listed species often rely on the use of surrogate species, safety factors, and species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) of chemical toxicity; however, the protectiveness of these approaches can be uncertain. We comprehensively evaluated the protectiveness of SSD first and fifth percentile hazard concentrations (HC1, HC5) relative to the application of safety factors using 68 SSDs generated from 1,482 acute (lethal concentration of 50%, or LC50) toxicity records for 291 species, including 24 endangered species (20 fish, four mussels). The SSD HC5s and HCls were lower than 97 and 99.5% of all endangered species mean acute LC50s, respectively. The HC5s were significantly less than the concentrations derived from applying safety factors of 5 and 10 to rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) toxicity data, and the HCls were generally lower than the concentrations derived from a safety factor of 100 applied to rainbow trout toxicity values. Comparison of relative sensitivity (SSD percentiles) of broad taxonomic groups showed that crustaceans were generally the most sensitive taxa and taxa sensitivity was related to chemical mechanism of action. Comparison of relative sensitivity of narrow fish taxonomic groups showed that standard test fish species were generally less sensitive than salmonids and listed fish. We recommend the use of SSDs as a distribution-based risk assessment approach that is generally protective of listed species.

Ecotoxicological models generally have large data requirements and are frequently based on existing information from diverse sources. Standardizing data for toxicological models may be necessary to reduce extraneous variation and to ensure models reflect intrinsic relationships. However, the extent to which data standardization is necessary remains unclear, particularly when data transformations are used in model development. An extensive acute toxicity database was compiled for aquatic species to comprehensively assess the variation associated with acute toxicity test type (e.g., flow-through, static), reporting concentrations as nominal or measured, and organism life stage. Three approaches were used to assess the influence of these factors on log-transformed acute toxicity: toxicity ratios, log-linear models of factor groups, and comparison of interspecies correlation estimation (ICE) models developed using either standardized test types or reported concentration type. In general, median ratios were generally less than 2.0, the slopes of log-linear models were approximately one for well-represented comparisons, and ICE models developed using data from standardized test types or reported concentrations did not differ substantially. These results indicate that standardizing test data by acute test type, reported concentration type, or life stage may not be critical for developing ecotoxicological models using large datasets of log-transformed values.