I have been in Costa Rica for just over a month now getting started with fieldwork for my PhD. For those of you that are interested in my research (and not just cute pictures of my baby in Costa Rica!), let me provide a brief introduction. My work is focused on comparing the impacts of grassroots reforestation efforts with the national Payment for Ecosystem Services (Pago por Servicios Ambientales, or PSA in Spanish) program. As the name would suggest, Payment for Ecosystem Services programs provide payments to incentivize land use practices that will improve ecosystem services like water filtration, flood control and carbon sequestration. While grassroots reforestation programs don’t offer financial incentives, they provide free trees and/or fencing to facilitate reforestation and are very popular here as a way to protect water supplies and create windbreaks.