Any ecosystem offers several goods and services to human beings. Ecosystem services are broadly
categorized as Provisioning Services, Regulatory services, Cultural services, and Supporting services.
Provisioning services include the food, vegetables, fruits, wood, and livestock which are the direct
products of ecosystems. Regulatory services include regulation of climate, water, pests/disease and
pollination including carbon sequestration. Cultural Services include various services which are of either
educational, aesthetic, cultural heritage including tourism, and recreation. Supporting services include
biodiversity, nutrient cycling, and soil formation. Agroforestry systems especially coconut and arecanut
gardens offer ample scope for diversification in terms of cropping systems, farming systems, products.
Agro-ecosystems also offer multitude of services to us of which few are studied measured and analyzed.
Many of the services are taken for granted and not valued. The current compilation explore the ecosystem
services as applicable perennial agro-ecosystems especially agroforestry systems and diversified coconut
and arecanut gardens. The book is designed to expose the readers to Ecosystem concepts including
quantification techniques, and introduce the concepts such as various cropping system diversification
options in coconut, arecanut gardens, scope of homestead farming systems, agroforestry systems, fish
farming in coconut gardens, aquaculture, carbon sequestration potential in agroforestry systems,
pollination services, nutrient management in spices, litter dynamics in plantation and agroforestry systems,
coconut leaf vermicomposting, economic analysis in cropping systems, and machine learning tools for data
analysis.