The Natural Capital Indicators report identifies key components of the environment, essential for the long term provision of benefits on which society relies. This report fills a gap in the understanding of these vital properties of the environment for well-being.
A new and systematic approach is used to develop indicators, by not only focusing on available data sets. The report also highlights which indicators can act as effective, early-warning indicators of change.
Indicators are identified for measuring change in natural capital, using a logic chain approach, enabling natural capital assets to be clearly linked to ecosystem services and benefits. Where possible, corresponding data sets have been found and linked to each indicator and a resulting list of data gaps detailed.
The project has been designed to be wide reaching in its applications. The aim is that it can be of use in any instance where the objective is to measure change in natural capital. It can also be used to help define “what good looks like” in terms of natural capital supporting the sustainable future provision of multiple ecosystem services. The report is accompanied by an Excel spreadsheet (Annex 4) detailing the indicators, data sources and data gaps as well as a series of summary notes and tables (Evidence Information Notes 038 to 049).
EIN038 is an overall summary showing the key indicators across all habitats. The brief method note is outlined in EIN039. Annex 1 (EIN040) displays all of the logic chains used to identify the indicators, Annex 2 (EIN041-EIN048) summarise the key indicators for each broad habitat type and Annex 3 (EIN049) contains tables of short and long list indicators for each broad habitat type, summarised from Annex 4, the Excel spreadsheet.
Following the testing of these Natural Capital Indicators to create the National Natural Capital Atlas and the series of Atlases for county and city regions, a number of updates have been made. Additional data sources have been added to the report, summaries and Excel spreadsheet. A few indicators have been updated following additional QA; changes have been made throughout the report and its annexes for some Marine and Coastal indicators.