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.