Latif Nasser

So Costanza and his colleagues took all these different studies, summed them together, did a whole bunch of math, and...

That's how valuable the services of nature are.

Let me ask you, I get the way this would work with a bat.

The bat's eating the bugs, but how do you do it with a field or something?

Do you just walk through and you're like, yeah, that's 20 bucks of services, that's 50.

How do you even figure out what the services are?

And we are in the water now.

We're in the water.

Wait, so a salt marsh, is it like the Florida wetlands but salty?

I suddenly don't know what a salt marsh is.

We sent one of our producers, Simon Adler, to a nearby salt marsh.

Partially to haze him.

But really, to talk to this guy.

The salt marsh will trap that water so that the pollutants settle, and then very often the marsh grass will suck up that water.

water into the roots and clean it up.

Yep.

Adam Welschel said that scientists in New England have already figured that out.

Then you've got to add the value of all the plants that feed the fish that end up on our dinner plates.

$338 annually per acre.

Then there are the bird watchers that buy lattes to support the local economy.