6. Final considerations

Tropical forests offer services of provision, regulation, and culture that are fundamental for the well-being of the societies that inhabit them, and for extension of all the Earth's inhabitants. The large extension and important biodiversity of these forests contribute to offer critical services for our society, which are being constantly modified by the management decisions that are part of the dynamics of human society. Food demand is one of the sectors that are related to flood control and climate regulation that tropical forests provide to a large section and the whole humanity, respectively. Management interventions such as forest restoration or payments for ecosystem services can help to recover or maintain ecosystem services that tropical forests offer.

Considering all the things, maintaining ecosystem services provided by tropical forests in the face of increasing land use change is a truly challenging task. Such task must start by understanding the components that make each tropical forest unique and how those components are linked and interact to create the ecological processes that maintain (and are maintained by) tropical forests. Then, understanding how human activities (economic, cultural, etc.) are dependent on such processes is the necessary step to analyze, and take decisions about, the consequences of land use change on the ecosystem services provided by tropical forests. It is time to address this challenge.
