Dawn is breaking over this remote upland region, where neat rows of coffee plants cover many of the hillsides. The rising tropical sun fills the landscape with color, revealing island-like remnants of native forest scattered among the coffee plantations. But across this rural countryside, trouble is oncoming. An invasive African insect known as the coffee berry borer is threatening the area's crops. Local farmers call the pest "la broca": the borer. Despite the early hour, Gretchen Daily, a Stanford University biology professor, is already at work studying this complex ecosystem. Amid noisy birdsong, Dr. Daily and her team are conducting experiments that demonstrate the vital connection between wildlife and native vegetation. Preliminary data from new studies suggest that consumption of insects like la broca by forest-dwelling birds and bats contribute significantly to coffee yields. Since 1991, Dr. Daily, 46, has made frequent trips to this Costa Rican site to conduct one of the tropics' most comprehensive population-level studies to monitor long-term ecological change. In recent years, Dr. Daily has expanded her research to include a global focus. She is one of the pioneers in the growing worldwide effort to protect the environment by quantifying the value of "natural capital"--nature's goods and services that are fundamental for human life--and factoring these benefits into the calculations of businesses and governments. Dr. Daily's work has attracted international attention and has earned her some of the world's most coveted (梦寐以求的) environmental awards. Part of Dr. Daily's interest in natural capital emerged from her research in Costa Rica, where she became intrigued with an innovative government initiative known as Payment for Environmental Services. The program, initiated in the 1990s, pays landowners to maintain native forest rather than cut it and has contributed to a significant reduction in Costa Rica's deforestation rate. The Costa Rican program helped inspire Dr. Daily to co-found the Natural Capital Project in 2006. NatCap, as the program is known, is a venture led by Stanford University, the University of Minnesota, and two of the world's largest conservation organizations, the Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund. It aims to transform traditional conservation methods by including the value of "ecosystem services" in business, community, and government decisions. These benefits from nature-like flood protection, crop pollination, and carbon storage--are not part of the traditional economic pattern. Early on, Dr. Daily recognized that new tools were needed to quantify nature's value." We began by developing a software program called InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs) to map and value nature's goods and services that are essential for humans," she said.