There is an ongoing debate within the ecosystem service
research community on whether natural resources are to be
denoted as ecosystem services or not. Lignite (fossil fuels in general),
wind as well as solar energy have for example been denoted
as usually non-renewable abiotic resources which can neither be
attributed to specific ecosystems nor be called ecosystem services
(de Groot et al., 2002). We do not agree with this as wind and solar
energy are renewable inexhaustible natural services. In the case of
fossil fuels we conclude that it is actually depending on the temporal
perspective (exchangeable by or in combination with higher
temperature and pressure), whether a resource is called renewable
or not. The production function “raw materials” was defined
by de Groot et al. (2002; p. 396) as “the conversion of solar energy
into biomass for human use”, which is exactly what initially took
place during fossil fuel formation. Therefore we suggest denoting
all goods and services provided by every natural system to benefit
human well-being as ecosystem goods and services.