The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is emphasizing the sometimes veiled link between ecosystems and natural hazards. The ProAct Network has released a briefing paper that argues “healthy ecosystems contribute positively to community and environmental resilience.”

Though not specifically a reaction to the Gulf spill, the paper points out a couple of ecosystem services provided by the environment that are relevant to the cleanup and disaster response. “Wetlands and other ecosystems can be managed to reduce the impact of floods and regulate water flow,” the paper says.

And, “Natural geological systems such as sedimentation and long-shore drift can be harnessed to facilitate the development of barrier islands, providing protection to vulnerable coastal communities.”

While most hazards experts recognize a link between environmental protection and natural disasters, it is not always a direct connection. A degraded environment in Haiti, for instance, has increased the long-term vulnerability of the population, but was not directly responsible for the deaths and injuries from the quake there.

There has been considerable interest in recent years among economists and environmentalists to value the services that ecosystems provide outside of traditional economic valuation—or, as we sometimes say, “for free.” According to these new valuations, wetlands provide the most valuable services. This was made abundantly clear in the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Over the last century, 5,000 square miles of Southern Louisiana wetlands have been lost to development. Research indicates that the loss of these wetlands is directly tied to increased storm impacts.

There are about 105.5 million acres of wetlands in the United States working away “for free” on our behalf. An estimate by the Ecoinformatics Collaboratory at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont values them at $6,960 per acre per year. This would make all U.S. wetlands worth about $734 billion every year.

Louisiana alone has three million acres of wetlands, making them worth $20.1 billion a year by the Gund estimates. There are an additional 1.2 million acres of wetlands in neighboring Mississippi ($8.1 billion per year). Alabama has an additional two million acres at risk ($13.9 billion annually).

British Petroleum has agreed to set aside $20 billion—one time—for spill claims. If you include the value of ecosystem services, BP’s set-aside won’t even cover a full year of potential damages to the coastline.

On May 27, President Obama ordered the construction of five barrier islands to protect the Louisiana coast at an anticipated cost of $360 million. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal does not seem impressed.

"It's been almost a week and BP hasn't done anything on that first segment…,” he said in a press conference televised by the Associated Press. “I'd much rather fight this oil on the sand than in our wetlands.”

Not everyone is thrilled with the idea of five new mountains of sand in the Gulf. The Christian Science Monitor quoted Louisiana State University Professor Gregory Stone as saying, “The governor has not been open about sharing details. This is a mammoth engineering project, and it can be done, but it’s being done willy-nilly. It’s foolish to embark on a project of this scale without establishing potential negative impacts on currents, on coastal erosion, on wildlife habitat, on a whole range of environmental issues.”

Earth Economics has released its own report on the value of lost ecosystem services, saying the BP spill threatens a “net value of $330 billion to $1.3 trillion in natural system goods and services.” The group’s valuation included the “free services” of protecting against hurricanes, buffering climate instability, providing water, and several other environmental goods, according to a press release. The Earth Economics report gave lump sum rather than annual values for lost ecosystem services, but however you value it, that's a lot of clams.