Environmental indicator: A Definition Environmental Indicator is a metric describing the state or dynamics of an environment. Indicators can be presented as absolute values, particularly where the units are physically meaningful, or as anomalies, ratios or percentages. Indicators can also have a synthetic dimension, combining more than one variable into a composite index.
Quality of a candidate indicator should be
specific to each potential pressure, state and response
easily measurable at reasonable cost
sufficiently well defined as to capture the main properties of the environment.
Key indicators of ICZM:
1. Socio-economic indicators: designed to capture interactions between human activities and coastal and marine environments. Socio-economic activities in the
coastal zone are varied and encompass a number of dimensions including economic, environmental, safety and public health.
2. Environmental indicators: measure the condition and trends of the state of the ecosystem, in particular its biological organization, vigour and geological,physical and chemical properties.
3. Governance indicators: designed to measure the performance of the responses to mitigate human pressures on the coastal and marine environment. They also measure the progress and quality of the governance process itself, that is, the extent to which a programme in addressing the issue(s) that triggered the development of the programme in the first place”
Key indicator
Category
Objective
Measurement
Socio-economic indicator
Tourism
To achieve sustainable
levels of tourism in the
coastal zone.
- Number of lodging places
- Number of hotel rooms
- Ratio of spaces in lodging places per 100 residents
- Ratio of hotel rooms per 100 residents
- Growth in lodging places and hotel rooms
Environmental indicators
Keystone and indicator species
Monitor ecosystem health
through the identification
and use of keystone and
indicator species.
Identification of priority species that could serve as
indicators of ecosystem health.
- Measurement of quality (e.g. contaminant exposure,
disease) and abundance of species identified above.
Governance indicator
Institutions
To establish a network of
organizations, at all levels of
governance, that supports and
facilitates the implementation
ICZM.
Qualitative assessment of the following dimensions:
- The number and characteristics of organizations
(government, NGO, community level etc.) active in
fields related to ICZM
- Description and level of activities carried out by these
organizations related to ICZM (participation in
meetings, education, field projects, enforcement etc.)
- Degree of influence such activities on the
advancement of ICZM related activities
Indicator framework (DPSIR)-a tool for indicator selection:
The DPSIR (driving forces-pressure-state-impactresponse) framework is designed to take different cultural, social, economic, institutional, political, and environmental aspects into account. The framework is structured to follow causal chains from an indirect root cause (‘driving forces’—D) to a direct pressure and finally a management response (R) between interacting components of social, economic, and environmental systems;
Driving forces of environmental change (e.g. industrial production)
Pressures on the environment (e.g. discharges of waste water)
State of the environment (e.g. water quality in rivers and lakes)
Impacts on population, economy, ecosystems (e.g. water unsuitable for drinking)
Response of the society (e.g. watershed protection)
Loads of N+P/ year enter sea (river, dredged material, coastal zone point sources, air, diffuse)
Total concentration of P and N in water and identification of blooms
Heavy metal pollution
Industry, urbanisation,
harbour activities (dredging and dumping)
Loads of heavy metals (Pb,
Cd, Hg) entering the coastal zone
Concentration of heavy
metals (Pb, Cd, Hg) in sediment
Over fishing
Fishery & mariculture
Large number of fishing vessels
Reduction in fish population
Depletion of
groundwater
Tourism and
recreation, urbanisation, agriculture
Ground water abstracted in
coastal zone
Sustainable use of
groundwater
Coastal erosion
Mining, harbour activities (dredging and dumping), coastal protection
Recession of shore (in m/year)
Land loss in (m2/year)
Climate change
Energy conversion, industry, transport & shipping, urbanisation, tourism & recreation
Relative sea level rise
Land under flooding risk
Habitat loss
Mining, harbour activities (dredging and dumping),
tourism & recreation fishery, coastal zone protection, agriculture, mariculture
Land use /marine function in coastal zone
Loss of priority habitats
A. Prime indicators to gauge coastal water health (Environment Impact Assessment)
A.1. Water quality
Chlorophyll a:
elevated concentrations of chlorophyll a can reflect an increase in nutrient loads and increasing trends can indicate eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems.
CO2 partial pressure:
is the gas phase pressure of carbon dioxide which would be in equilibrium with the dissolved carbon dioxide. An increase in the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere (due to global warming) directly leads to an increase in the amount of CO2 absorbed by the oceans. This is called ocean acidification and it is a very serious issue.
Dissolved oxygen:
the amount of oxygen contained in water, and define the living conditions for oxygen-requiring (aerobic) aquatic organisms. Coastal discharges of wastes rich in organic carbon (e.g. from sewage treatment plants, paper manufacturing, food processing and other industries) can substantially reduce dissolved oxygen concentrations.
Marine pathogens:
faecal streptococci/enterococci are the recommended indicator for human pathogens in marine waters.
Metal contaminants:
Anthropogenic sources of metals in the marine environment include industrial and municipal waste products, urban and agricultural runoff, fine sediments eroded from catchments, antifouling paints from ships (mainly tin and copper), metals from pipes in sewage treatment plants and drainage from acid sulfate soils and mine sites.
pH:
a measure of acidity or alkalinity of water on a log scale from 0 (extremely acidic) through 7 (neutral) to 14 (extremely alkaline). pH is driven more frequently to greater extremes under eutrophic conditions, allowing algal species with tolerance to extreme pH levels to grow and dominate communities, and to potentially form algal blooms. Changes in pH have indirect impacts on aquatic organisms. pH is important in calcium carbonate solubility (calcite or aragonite), which is important for shell-forming organisms. Shell growth (i.e. calcification) is inhibited if water becomes too acidic.
Salinity:
a dynamic indicator of the nature of the ecosystem. Most aquatic organisms function optimally within a narrow range of salinity. When salinity changes to above or below this range, an organism may lose the ability to regulate its internal ion concentration.
Turbidity:
results from coloured dissolved organic matter and suspended particulate matter in the water column. The most obvious effect of increased turbidity is reduction in light available for photosynthesis.
Water column nutrients:
the nutrients nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are essential building blocks for plant and animal growth. Nutrient loads are enhanced by human activity. Major anthropogenic sources of nutrients include runoff from agricultural areas (e.g. fertilisers), urban stormwater and wastewater (including sewage), eroded soils and aquaculture.
Water temperature: unnatural change in water temperature is an indicator of water quality.
A.2. Sediment quality
Benthic CO2 flux: refers to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released from a unit area of sediment over a specific time interval, during the decomposition of organic matter. Organic matter loadings to sediment are usually the main control on the magnitudes of the benthic CO2 fluxes.
Denitrification efficiency:
is the percentage of inorganic nitrogen released from the sediment as nitrogen gas during the decomposition of organic matter. Denitrification efficiency is a good indicator of sustainable carbon loading rates in bays, shallow coastal lagoons.
Organic matter & nutrients:
are assessed as Total Nitrogen (TN) and Total Phosphorus (TP) concentrations, and have inorganic as well as organic sources. The amount of organic matter found in sediment is a function of the amount of various sources reaching the sediment surface and the rates at which different types of organic matter are degraded by microbial processes.
Sedimentation rates:
refer to the amount of material (organic and mineral) deposited by the action of water over a given interval of time. Sedimentation is measured in terms of vertical accumulation over time or sediment density per unit area over time.
Toxicants:
in coastal waters are derived from a range of agricultural, industrial and domestic sources. Common toxicants from industrial and domestic sources include paints & primers, petrol & oil, garden pesticides & fertilisers and anti-freeze.
c. Biotic indicators
Plankton:
Plankton are small plants or animals that float, drift, or swim in the water column of any body of water. Populations of this marine plant or animals will grow or diminish rapidly in response to changes in its environment. Changes in the trends for a given plankton population—such as its density, spatial distribution, and rate of population growth or diminishment—will alert Earth scientists, that environmental conditions are changing there.
Benthic organisms:
the biomass of benthic organisms in coastal embayments is often high. It declines if communities are affected by prolonged periods of poor water quality. Hence benthic faunal density serves as a yardstick to asssess the water quality.
Fish assemblages: Fishes have long been used as indicators of environmental change because of their generally large size and relative ease of identification. Different types of fish assemblage indicators include changes in population abundance , the presence/absence of key species and modifications of local assemblages including changes in biomass, species composition, ratios of species or feeding groups; species diversity and recruitment success (i.e. number of young fish entering a population); and measures of health (frequency of deformities, diseases and other anomalies). Monitoring of fish communities is advocated as an alternative to water quality monitoring for assessing ecosystem integrity.
Indicators to monitor the effectiveness of ICZM:
ICZM requires robust indicators of sustainability that gauge the ‘health’ of the coast in relation to environmental, social and economic activity. These indicators need to be based on rigorous scientific, social and economic research. To prove that ICZM is actually integrating management, policy, and effort, ICZM specific indicators are used. These indicators are vital to monitor the status and trends of biological diversity, to improve the effectiveness of biodiversity management and to signal key issues to be addressed through policy interventions and other actions (including early warning systems).
