Environmental Science 15th Edition by Scott Spoolman,Tyler Miller

Exercise 8

Pick an area near where you live or go to school that hosts a variety of plants and animals. It could be a yard, an abandoned lot, a park, a forest, or some part of your campus. Visit this area at least three times and make a survey of the plants and animals that you find there, including any trees, shrubs, groundcover plants, insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals. Also, take a small sample of the topsoil and find out what organisms are living there. (Be careful to get permission from whoever owns or manages the land before doing any digging.) Using guidebooks and other resources to help identify different species, record your findings and categorize them into the general types of organisms listed above. Then do some research to find out about the ecosystem services that some or all of these organisms provide. Try to find and record five of these services. Finally, do some research to find a range of values that economists have assigned to these ecosystem services at the global level. Write a report summarizing your findings.