Protected areas play an important role in conservation schemes around the world. We explore the role that protected areas play in providing important ecosystem services in terms of watershed protection, storage of important scientific information and mitigation of the negative impacts associated with natural disasters via soil erosion control, regulation of the hydrological cycle and early warning system implementation among others. We explore how particular management schemes within specific protected areas may impact the level of provision of these ecosystem services via a general model which then will be used to simulate the final level of ecosystem service provision with data obtained from the US National Park Service and other agencies. Initial findings and theoretical justification were presented at the First Latin American Congress for National Disasters which took place in November, 2010.