FAQs

We stand out by delivering practical results and working hand-in-hand with communities. Our team translates complex, interdisciplinary research into clear, actionable guidance that decision-makers can use. Whether we’re helping a city plan for reducing flood risk or showing the value of a healthy forest, we focus on work that leads to real impact.

We also believe community knowledge and participation are essential for lasting solutions. That’s why we collaborate closely with local partners–ensuring our work is equitable and grounded in community needs.

An ecosystem services valuation is a way to measure the dollar value of benefits we get from nature–like clean water, flood risk reduction, and pollination. 

Traditional land valuation typically focuses on what the land can produce or sell in markets, such as crops, timber, or real estate. In contrast, ecosystem services valuation includes the vital, non-market benefits that natural systems provide to people and communities—benefits that are often overlooked in standard economic assessments.

Natural capital—like forests, wetlands, and soil—provides essential benefits that support our health, economy, and well-being. By accounting for natural capital, we can recognize the value of services like clean air, pollination, and carbon storage. When these benefits are left out of plans or budgets, they’re often overlooked or depleted. Including natural capital in decision-making helps protect ecosystems, avoid long-term costs, and support more informed and sustainable decisions.

​Air purification, water quality, disaster prevention, and food production are all essential to human health. The value of these ecosystem services highlights how essential they are, even as they become strained or degraded.

Access to green space has also been proven to improve mental and physical health. These benefits include reduced stress, improved cognitive function, and increased physical activity.

Many people view nature as priceless—and rightly so. But in economic decisions, what isn’t measured often gets ignored. When ecosystems are assigned a value of zero, development and pollution can proceed unchecked, leading to long-term harm for people and the environment. 

Assigning a monetary value to nature’s benefits doesn’t mean reducing it to a price tag. Instead, it helps make sure those benefits—like clean air, food, and mental health—are recognized in budgets, policies, and planning. Valuing nature makes its contributions visible, especially when communities are weighing complex decisions.

Earth Economics’ work helps a wide range of decision makers, including land managers, local government agencies (such as cities, counties, water agencies, transportation commissions, and special purpose districts), and Tribal governments. We also work with land trusts, conservation organizations, community-based organizations, and businesses that are planning projects, developing strategies, or advocating for nature-based solutions.

Our work informs decisions about land use, public and private investments, community health, and climate resilience. By integrating the value of natural systems into planning and policy, we help partners make choices that strengthen local economies, protect ecosystems, and improve quality of life.

Green infrastructure is engineering that works with nature to prevent floods, purify water, enhance soil productivity, and mitigate floods. Rather than costly ‘built’ infrastructure that degrades over time, green infrastructure projects increase their returns over time.

While definitions may vary, a nature-based solution is one that uses natural systems to solve an environmental challenge, such as restoring wetlands to improve water quality and prevent flooding, or creating natural fire buffer areas to mitigate wild fires. Natural carbon capture from planting cover crops or trees is another example, as is utilizing regenerative agriculture practices to reduce reliance on fossil fuel derived fertilizer and enhance soil health and productivity.

Earth Economics has developed a globally respected database of ecosystem service values which allows our analysts to calculate benefit transfer valuation using data from peer reviewed studies from one location or context to estimate the value of similar ecosystem services or environmental benefits in another location or context.

Our statistical models and benefit-cost tools allow us to take a variety of data into account when valuing ecosystems and the services they provide:

Market Pricing: The current market value of items produced in the ecosystem (e.g., water, fish, and wood).

Replacement Cost: The cost of replacing a functioning natural system with man-made infrastructure (e.g. natural water filtration versus a water treatment plant).

Avoided Cost: Natural services that prevent expenses society would otherwise incur (e.g., wetlands and riparian buffers provide natural water storage and flood mitigation, reducing flood damage costs).

Production Approaches: Services enhance incomes (e.g., crop productivity after irrigation in agricultural systems).

Travel Cost: Services are valued based on what visitors spend to access them, including transportation expenses and the value of their time (e.g., tourists' willingness to pay to visit national parks reflects the minimum value they place on this experience).

Hedonic Pricing: The change in property value based on the proximity of a service (e.g., a beautiful grassland or river view).

Contingent Valuation: Value estimates based on survey methods (e.g., people’s willingness to pay to protect watersheds).

Ecosystem Services Valuations provide critical financial justification for protecting natural assets by replacing the default economic value of zero—or the abstract concept of "priceless"—with concrete, defensible figures. While ecosystems are inherently invaluable, like human life, we quantify human contributions (e.g. wages).

Assets without clear financial value are systematically undervalued and ultimately sacrificed in budget-driven decisions. In valuing ecosystem services, organizations can secure adequate operational funding, demonstrate measurable returns on conservation investments, and integrate natural assets into formal financial planning. Valuations of natural assets may also enable or facilitate borrowing against them.

Fire-related costs are increasing dramatically across the United States, with nearly half of the U.S. Forest Service budget now consumed by firefighting operations. Most fire-related costs stem from saving people and protecting structures in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), vulnerable areas where development meets fire-prone landscapes, rather than from direct fire fighting expenses. These expenses strain local and FEMA budgets.

By accurately valuing ecosystem services and quantifying true wildfire costs, policymakers can better align insurance rates with actual risk levels and redirect investments toward prevention rather than reaction.

Similarly, by demonstrating the value of wetlands, Earth Economics has helped communities make the case for flood and storm surge damage mitigation through preservation and investments in green infrastructure.

Earth Economics uses "benefit-cost analysis" rather than "cost-benefit analysis" to emphasize positive outcomes and opportunities first and aligns with our mission to demonstrate the economic value of natural capital while acknowledging associated costs.

Absolutely. Quantifying the economic value of ecosystem services provides policymakers with compelling evidence of their jurisdiction's natural wealth to develop more effective environmental policies.

By assigning measurable values to natural systems, ecosystem service analysis creates a strong economic case for investing in green infrastructure, recreation and conservation, giving decision-makers the data-driven justification needed to develop policies that enhance rather degrade their natural capital.

Ecosystem service valuation is increasingly accepted in courts to support Natural Resource Damage Assessments and similar decisions worldwide. In 2012, Earth Economics conducted an ecosystem services valuation to estimate damages from a gold mine in Costa Rica, and these values were later upheld by the Costa Rican Supreme Court. Similarly, ecosystem service valuation helped determine compensation for damages incurred by BP during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.