The Chronicle of Higher Education profiles Gretchen Daily and the Natural Capital Project:
No one knew exactly how the science of ecosystem services would work, beyond the idea that it would combine ecology with economics. In paper after paper, it was ironed out. Cash would be the science's lingua franca; if a service could be valued in dollars, like timber production or irrigation water, it would be. (Others would be trickier. How do you find the real value of clean water?) It would be interdisciplinary in a way that conservation biology had never quite been, pulling in hydrology, geology, genetics—whatever was needed. People, by definition, would be at its core: An ecosystem can function without humans, but it can provide a service only if we use it.
It is a long read, but worth it. This might be the first paper one should read if one hasn't read one yet (i.e., I just printed it out):
Ruckelshaus, Mary, Emily McKenzie, Heather Tallis, Anne Guerry, Gretchen Daily, Peter Kareiva, Stephen Polasky et al. "Notes from the field: Lessons learned from using ecosystem service approaches to inform real-world decisions." Ecological Economics forthcoming 2013. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800913002498
