Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century - Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead - page 109

better understand long-term implications of human effects on ecosystems and
health, it will need to develop scientific processes that take the long view —that
is, processes that can assess changes, even minor ones, over the long term. To
detect trends in environmental and human health conditions and to know
whether they fall within the range of recent natural variation, long-term data on
the basic functioning of environmental systems and human well-being are
needed. For example, the scientific community is aware of recent changes in
weather patterns, especially increases in extreme events, only because long-term
weather records are available.
Indicators
A concise set of environmental indicators can provide information about
the status of and trends in key components of natural and human systems and
provide evidence of changes that should be monitored. A modest number of
environmental indicators of fundamental ecologic processes and attributes are in
use (Orians and Policansky 2009; see Box 4-1 for a list of principles to guide the
development of indicators). In 2002, a committee of EPA's SAB developed a
framework for assessing ecologic conditions (EPA SAB 2002) that is similar to
frameworks developed by the H. John Heinz Center (Heinz Center 2002, 2008)
and a National Research Council (NRC) committee (NRC 2000). The frame-
work organizes a large number of potential indicators into six categories that
represent the key attributes of an ecologic system as a whole. Each attribute can
be represented by an individual indicator or by an index created by combining
indicators. The six categories can also be used as a checklist for designing envi-
ronmental management and assessment programs and as a guide for aggregating
and organizing information. In its 2008 Report on the Environment , EPA ana-
lyzed 85 indicators related to environmental and human health that focused on
air, water, land, human exposure and health, and ecologic conditions (EPA
2008). However, it has not been clear that the agency is committed to or has a
plan to sustain this effort over the longer term. Furthermore, the NRC Commit-
tee on Incorporating Sustainability in the US Environmental Protection Agency
(NRC 2011a) found that most indicators chosen by EPA are inadequate for ex-
ploring the relationship between economic conditions and ecosystem pressure
and did not measure such important elements as environmental justice. The
committee called for the development of additional sustainability indicators that
could include social and economic conditions and, given the challenges of pre-
dicting long-term data, stated that any uncertainties in the understanding of indi-
cators should be clearly communicated.
According to some analyses, it is important that EPA continue to develop
and adapt a few indicators that are capable of detecting long-term changes in
environmental conditions and human well-being above the inevitable noise of
variability (GAO 2004). Such indicators should be designed to provide informa-
tion on basic processes that are most likely to be useful in dealing with both cur-
rent and future challenges, many of which are unknown today. Indicators whose