ABSTRACT The ecosystems of the State of Maryland provide numerous benefits to the people that reside there. Water and air quality are improved, habitat for wildlife is provided, and recreational opportunities are made available by virtue of the existence of the environment. These benefits are commonly termed ecosystem services (ES). For some of these benefits a market exists to set a dollar value, but many ecosystem services exist outside traditional economic markets. This work quantifies and values ecosystem services (ES) from the natural lands of Maryland; quantifying each ecosystem service in terms of its biophysical energy flow (i.e. emergy) and relating the flow of emergy to money by observing instances where people have exhibited monetary preference for the work of the environment (i.e. “eco-pricing”). This method is an improvement on economic methods of estimating monetary value of ecosystem services (e.g. hedonic pricing, contingent valuation), as it acknowledges that people value the work of the environment through societal, rather than individual, preference and that ecological work has inherent value, independent of the economy. Results are presented for ecosystem benefits from Maryland’s forests, wetlands, and the Chesapeake Bay; totaling $5.65 billion per year. This work is developed as a framework for ES valuation; it is being used to help guide policy choices at the state and county level in Maryland and being incorporated into research efforts at the University of Maryland and the US EPA.