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ENVIRONMENTAL INDICATORS
In order to answer questions about the current condition of natural resources and determine long term
trends, monitoring programs have been established to assess the condition of our estuaries, streams,
forests, and other resources.The many reasons for undertaking such environmental quality assessments
include: protecting human health; maintaining the integrity of ecosystems; improving understanding of
the functioning of disturbed and undisturbed systems; and identifying the most appropriate indicators
for describing the status and trends of environmental conditions. This knowledge can also be used to
guide control measures and suggest remedial actions to improve environmental quality.
Successfully measuring the state of the environment requires measurements of reliable, sensitive, and
interpretable indicators of condition. Indicators need to be understandable, quantifiable, and broadly
applicable.The indicators should relate directly to characteristics, uses or sustainability of the particular
system. Indicators can be biological (including biochemical, cellular, organismal, population, community
or ecosystem level), chemical, physical, and social measurements. Indices can be created that integrate
several individual measurements to provide a single number that represents the condition of a resource.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Congress and the Administration should direct agencies to
invest in the development, use, and reporting of environmental
indicators that are:
- understandable to the public and to policymakers
- connected to policy and management goals and measured
against defined targets
- meaningful across varying temporal and spatial scales and
take response time and sensitivity into account when
measured against the needs of decisionmakers
- aimed at filling gaps in data, analysis, and reporting among
existing indicators, and that place more emphasis on
ecosystem level functions among new indicators
- targeted toward defined environmental health goals
- incorporated into integrative models showing feedback
among indicators (such models display predictive scenarios,
and incorporate degrees of certainty)
- able to facilitate simulation, which can be useful in examining
relationships among indicators and the relationships
between indicators and the environmental systems that they
represent
- part of long-term programs with sustained funding that
involve comparable analytical methods across indicators.
Any monitoring programs conducted by citizens should be
required to use standardized methods that are consistent with
and linked with the type of government and scientific
monitoring efforts described above.
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