Jack Kelley
Christina Munoz
Contemporary Environmental Issues
27 January 2015

Reflection Paper 1

After reading the article “Do ecosystem services have economic value?” I took away many important points that have not only improved my knowledge required for this course, but it also gives me a much more detailed insight to the ecosystem, which I am eager to learn more about. I read about an aspect of our ecosystem that I really never thought would be related to one another and that is our economy. Topics about ecosystem services, adding economic value to those services, and how these services help manage natural ecosystems are a few of the main points I came across while reading this article.

First off, I believe that the article sets out to let the reader know exactly what it is the main focus is, that being the ecosystem services. In short, ecosystem services provide clean drinking water and decompose waste. What this really means though is that these services keep up a healthy environment for us humans to live in. Without it, we do not have the production of oxygen and water detoxification. It is important to know how vital this really is to us. As the human population is expected to grow to 9 billion people by 2050, the ecosystem services must also grow along with it. Providing a sufficient way of living to our population can be obtained but only with the awareness of where all the resources come from. As for assessing an economical value to the ecosystem