These are some examples of environmental indicators :
- Sustainable Economic Well-being Index (IBES).
- Human development index (HDI).
- Environmental sustainability index (ISA)
- Environmental performance index (EPI).
- Global Green Economy Index (GGEI).
- Ecological footprint (HE).
- Living Planet Index (LPI).
- Carbon footprint.
- Water footprint.
What are examples of environmental factors?
Policies that can have long-term effects on companies include:
- Taxation
- Tariffs
- Employment law
- Competition regulation
- Import restrictions
- Intellectual property law
What are some examples of environmental features?
The plan includes the following:
- Real revenue must be doubled to CYP 1.8 billion in 2010.
- Average spending per tourist must be increased from CYP 388 to CYP 512 in 2010.
- The extent of the tourism sector’s dependence on the season must be lessened.
- The number of tourist arrivals must be increased from 2.5 million in 2000, to 4 million in2010.
What are some examples of environmental problems?
What are some examples of environmental issues? 15 Major Current Environmental Problems. Pollution: Pollution of air, water and soil require millions of years to recoup. Global Warming: Climate changes like global warming is the result of human practices like emission of Greenhouse gases. 7
What are some examples of environmental impacts?
The impacts that these have on the environment have become clear and include:
- Climate change including Global warming
- Acid rain, photochemical smog and other forms of pollution
- Ocean acidification
- Displacement/extinction of wildlife
- Resource depletion - forests, water, food
- and more
What are the 5 main environmental indicators?
Indicator: Species extinction rates and threatened species.Indicator: Ecological footprint (land use and CO2 emissions)Indicator: land use change.Indicator: Wetland surface change.Indicator: land degradation: Net Primary production and rain use efficienty.Indicator: Soil pollution.More items...
What are the environment indicators?
Environmental indicators are simple measures that tell us what is happening in the environment. Since the environment is very complex, indicators provide a more practical and economical way to track the state of the environment than if we attempted to record every possible variable in the environment.
How many environmental indicators are there?
The 135 environmental indicators belong to 13 different methods (Table 1). See SI2 for additional information about these footprints.
What are environmental indicators of sustainability?
2.2. Based on the three pillars concept, a sustainability indicator can be defined as a measurable aspect of environmental, economic, or social systems that is useful for monitoring changes in system characteristics relevant to the continuation of human and environmental well being.
Why are environmental indicators important?
Environmental indicators are essential tools for tracking environmental progress, supporting policy evaluation and informing the public. Since the early 1990s, such indicators have gained in importance in many countries and in international fora.
What are the indicators of environmental growth?
The environment-related indicators illuminate phenomena such as urbanization and the loss of biological diversity; agricultural output and declining forest area; freshwater withdrawals and freshwater growing scarcity; electricity production and greenhouse gas emissions.
What type of environmental indicators are lichens?
Lichens are well known as sensitive indicators of air pollution, particularly for sulfur dioxide. In part, this is related to their unique biology.
What are environmental indices and indicators?
An environmental index is the combination of multiple sources of information (i.e., indicators of ecological responses) about an environmental system (e.g., a stream) from potentially varying attributes of that system (e.g., instream processes, ecological processes, species richness, riparian vegetation, etc.).
What are examples of social indicators?
General social context indicators General context indicators including household income, fertility, migration, family and the demographic trends, provide the general background for other indicators in this report (see Chapter 3).
Which are the pollution indicators?
They include temperature, color, odor, aggregate stability, available water capacity, bulk density, infiltration rate, slaking, crusts, structure, and macro-pores. Only, the most distinct and reliable physical pollution indicators with the actual wide practice were designated.
Which of the following are indicators of global environmental stress?
Of these five indicators—eutrophication, acidification, mercury in fish tissue, presence of nonnative fish species, and shoreline disturbances—high stress caused by acidification clearly affected the fewest northeastern lakes (Figure 9).
What are environmental indicators?
Environmental indicators selected in the participatory process include the volume of water per capita and year, a water quality index (constructed by a combination of the amount of fertiliser and pesticide applied), the area of wetlands preserved, and an exploitation index of renewable water resources.
Who can collect information to populate environmental indicators and provide valuable input into decisions made around critical natural resources?
Landowners, citizens, scientists, members of NGO's, and others can collect information to populate environmental indicators and provide valuable input into decisions made around critical natural resources.
What are the most commonly used methods for hazard identification?
For environmental hazards, the most often used methods for hazard identification are surveillance and monitoring. Documenting variability in spatial and temporal patterns of environmental indicators is a first step in identifying environmental hazards.
How can citizen science help us understand environmental change?
Citizen science can support better understanding of environmental change by helping to track key environmental indicators, such as water quality data , which requires extensive sampling over long periods of time. Similarly, our understanding of bird populations relies heavily on amateur bird watchers undertaking annual bird counts.
Which organization has been developing environmental indicators since the early 1990s?
Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. The OECD has been developing environmental indicators since the early 1990s and has published the first international sets of environmental indicators. These also included the OECD Core Set of Environmental Indicators.
What is the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment?
One notable effort is the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which was developed under the CBD in order to mobilize leading scientists to conduct ecosystem assessments around the world.
What is an environmental indicator?
“An environmental indicator is a numerical value that helps provide insight into the state of the environment or human health. Indicators are developed based on quantitative measurements or statistics of environmental condition that are tracked over time.
What is an individual indicator?
Individual indicators are designed to translate complex information in a concise and easily understood manner in order to represent a particular phenomenon ( e.g. ambient air quality ). In contrast, indicator systems (or collections of indicators), when seen as a whole are meant to provide an assessment of the full environment domain or a major subset of it (e.g. forests).
Why are indicators important?
Since the environment is very complex, indicators provide a more practical and economical way to track the state of the environment than if we attempted to record every possible variable in the environment. For example, concentrations of ozone depleting substances (ODS) in the atmosphere, tracked over time, is a good indicator with respect to ...
What is the second subset of state indicators?
A second subset is the collection of indicators that measure human activities or anthropogenic pressures, such as greenhouse gas emissions. These are also referred to as “pressure” indicators.
A sustainability perspective: Ecological Footprint
The Ecological Footprint aims to represent the amount of biologically productive land and sea areas necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes, and to mitigate associated waste.
Who is consuming the most?
Not everyone is consuming at the same rate. This is most easily seen if the ecological footprint for each region is calculated per person.
What is ecological indicator?
Ecological indicators are chosen to report on the state, or condition, of ecosystems. In contrast to the more familiar environmental indicators, ecological indicators are not intended to report on the quantities of pollutants or other stressors affecting ecosystems or on what government or other programs are doing (e.g., issuing permits).
How are syrphidae used as indicators?
The use of Syrphidae as environmental indicators needs more research in order to solve some standing problems. Particular attention must be paid to the distribution of rare species associated with particularly intact habitats, e.g., the rare European Callicera rufa, Calliprobola speciosa and Brachyopa bicolor. Stubbs (1982) prepared a list of Syrphidae species that can be considered as indicators of earlier ancient woods in England; additional such reference lists of forests in other regions would aid in identifying rare species and changing patterns in species distributions. More research is also necessary in order to identify species that are usually described as common or frequent, but that prefer particular habitats, e.g., Melanostoma scalare, which is common in wooded habitats but is more rare in highly simplified agroecosystems. Rotheray (1993) provides a useful guide for hoverfly larvae and proposed that the study of larval stages can be particularly useful in the conservation of special habitats, such as woods. Using larvae as bioindicators is more difficult in non-punctiform areas, e.g., at the level of landscape ecology studies, where the number of sites to be investigated may be too numerous and very diverse. In this case adults may be more useful, even though more detailed studies are necessary to better understand the effects of environmental conditions on their distribution. The use of Syrphidae to evaluate the impact of specific agricultural practices, e.g., no tillage, integrated management, etc. may be very difficult because of their mobility, especially if the studied fields are of small dimensions. In the future, hoverflies probably will prove to be of greatest use for the evaluation of environmental health at a larger scale, in particular in assessment of landscape diversity.
What are the criteria for environmental indicators?
The main criteria used in selecting the appropriate indicators are environmental relevance, international comparability, and applicability of the information provided by the indicator. The environmental indicators should: 1 provide a representative picture of environmental conditions and pressures on the environment 2 be simple and easy to interpret 3 based on international standards and provide a basis for international comparison 4 adequately documented and of known quality 5 updated at regular intervals in accordance to reliable procedures.
What are the criteria used to select the appropriate indicators?
The main criteria used in selecting the appropriate indicators are environmental relevance, international comparability, and applicability of the information provided by the indicator. The environmental indicators should: provide a representative picture of environmental conditions and pressures on the environment.
What is an EPI?
Environmental performance indicators (EPI) concern an organization’s impacts on living and non-living natural systems, including ecosystems, land, air and water. EPIs can show clearly how the organization is performing, and provide a firm basis for future targets and improvements.
Can guidelines be used for environmental reporting?
However, all guidelines may be used for environmental reporting. The European commission have published a guidance for the implementation, selection and use of environmental performance indicators with eco-management and audit scheme (EMAS) See link.
What Is An Indicator?
- Environmental indicators encompass a set of information to be used as an instrument, they work in the evaluation of political decisions within the environment, they are even used within institutions and companies to be references of sustainable development, in addition to collabor…
Indicator Hierarchy
Additional Information
Contact
Overview
- Administrative Level 1- resources used and activities taken by governmental agencies and environmental groups, such as permits written or grants issued; designed to result in an action by a second party that reduces or prevents pollution or exposure to pollution Level 2- steps taken by entities in response to Level 1 actions to reduce pollutants en...
Discussion
- EPA's Report on the Environment, Indicators State Trends for EPA Region 3- This report lists the most reliable indicators with data specific for EPA Region 3, those that EPA believes are of critica...
- Application of the Pressure-State-Response Framework for the Land Quality Indicators (LQI) Programme- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Use in assessment
- Bill Jenkins ([email protected]) Associate Division Director Office of Environmental Information & Analysis (3EA10) Environmental Assessment & Innovation Division US EPA Region 3 1650 Arch St. Philadelphia, PA 19103-2029 215-814-2911
Audience
Environmental indicators are simple measures that tell us what is happening in the environment. Since the environment is very complex, indicators provide a more practical and economical way to track the state of the environment than if we attempted to record every possible variable in the environment. For example, concentrations of ozone depleting substances (ODS) in the atmosphere, tracked over time, is a good indicator with respect to the environmental issue of stra…
Indicator systems and communicating them
Environmental indicator criteria and frameworks have been used to help in their selection and presentation.
It can be considered, for example, that there are major subsets of environmental indicators in-line with the Pressure-State-Response model developed by the OECD. One subset of environmental indicators is the collection of ecological in…
See also
Some have attempted to monitor and assess the state of the planet using indicators.
Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, has said: — Environmentally, the world is in an overshoot mode. If we use environmental indicators to evaluate our situation, then the global decline of the economy’s natural support systems - the environmental decline that will lead to economic decline and social collapse- is well underway.
Some have attempted to monitor and assess the state of the planet using indicators.
Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, has said: — Environmentally, the world is in an overshoot mode. If we use environmental indicators to evaluate our situation, then the global decline of the economy’s natural support systems - the environmental decline that will lead to economic decline and social collapse- is well underway.
External links
The types of indicators selected or developed should be partially based on who will be using the information from the indicators. There are generally three possible audiences to consider, each with different information needs. These audiences are: 1) technical experts and science advisors, 2) policy-makers, decision makers and resource managers, and 3) general public and media.
The technical experts and scientists will be interested in detailed and complex indicators. Thes…