The Baseline - Mining and the Environment: From Ore to Metal - page 350

An indicator must be practical
and realistic, given the many
constraints facing those who
implement and monitor a mining
project.

realistic, given the many constraints facing those who implement and monitor a mining
project. An environmental indicator should (Ward et al. 1998):
● serve as a robust indicator of environmental change;
● rel ect a fundamental or highly valued aspect of the environment;
● provide an early warning of potential problems;
● be capable of being monitored to provide statistically verii able and reproducible data
that show trends over time;
● be scientii cally credible;
● be easy to understand;
● be monitored regularly with relative ease;
● be cost-effective;
● have relevance to management needs;
● contribute to monitoring of progress towards implementing stated management
commitments;

●

where possible and appropriate, facilitate community involvement;

●

contribute to the fuli lment of reporting obligations; and

●

where possible and appropriate, use existing commercial and managerial indicators.

It is most effective to be selective and use smaller sets of well-chosen indicators. Using
too many indicators risks diluting their usefulness. Priorities may become confused and the
details may seem overwhelming for both the developers and the users (Segnestam 1999). It
is also recommended that a concise indicator proi le as illustrated in Table 8.2 be estab-
lished at the outset of a long-term environmental monitoring programme. Establishing
such proi les helps in understanding and documenting the rationale of monitoring efforts.
Biological systems are organized hierarchically from the molecular through the ecosys-
tem to the landscape level. Logical classes such as genotypes, populations, species, commu-
nities, and ecosystems are heterogeneous; all members of each class can be distinguished
from one another. The variety of biological coni gurations at all levels is extremely large,
currently unknown and probably not measurable. Yet for monitoring and reporting on
the condition of biological diversity there has to be some acceptable baseline against which
change can be measured, and some related biological indicators.
Figure 8.3 shows a biological hierarchy with precision of measurement increasing from
the higher more heterogeneous levels down to the molecular level, while practicality
(including effort and cost) increases in the opposite direction. Higher levels of organiza-
tion also integrate ecological processes and functions such as nutrient and energy cycling,
which result partly from components of biological diversity. A decision on which level of
surrogacy to use, depends on the scale of measurement and reporting and the resources
available: the greater the level of precision, the more useful the result. For project-level
environment reporting it is possible, in some cases, to use sub-sets of taxa as surrogates for
biological diversity, but vegetation classes and environmental domains are also commonly
adopted. Appendix 8.1 lists some common indicators to measure the current state of the
biological environment, and to detect future change. The listing can not be exhaustive, and
actual indicators will change from site to site.

It is most effective to be selective
and use smaller sets of well-
chosen indicators.

Using Wildlife as Early Warning Signals for Human Impacts

Using wildlife (or sometimes plants) as early warning for environmental and human
impacts, differentiation is made between indicator species (indicating human impacts on
the environment) and sentinel species (indicating potential health impacts on humans).