Note that the data published in the 2002 State of the Nation’s Ecosystems Report as well as the 2003 and 2005 Web-Only Updates have been superseded by the 2008 Report and thus should be used with caution. For the most recent data, purchase the 2008 Report from Island Press.

Data Gaps and Problems in Indicator Definition

Again, of the 103 indicators included in the report, 33 have all data required for periodic national reporting, 25 have partial data available, and the remaining 45 include no data at all. Thus 70 measures (68%) are missing some or all data.

View Data for Figure A.3	View Data for Figure A.4

For 7 of these 70 indicators, the data required for national reporting exist (or would have been possible to obtain), but time and/or financial constraints prevented us from assembling them for this report. Three of these involve work with large data sets using geographic information systems (GIS). Another two involve categorizing 16,000 native plants into the ecosystems in which they are typically found. The remaining two would have required addition of questions to a recent recreational survey.

For another 5 of the 70 indicators, we have reason to expect that data adequate for national reporting will become available soon. These include coastal bathing water quality and additional data on shoreline habitat, forest fragmentation, and forest age structure. Table A.2 lists the 12 indicators that are either expected to become available soon or that could be made available now with additional funding.

For 41 indicators, some data are currently collected, but these data are of uncertain quality or comparability. Often the data are not comparable because different agencies or programs use different methods to collect or manage them. The fact that at least some data exist for these indicators means that it may be possible to fill data gaps relatively easily, through collation and aggregation of data from existing programs. However, detailed analyses would be required to determine the quality, coverage, and comparability of the various data sets. Such analyses were beyond the scope of this project, but should be a high priority.

Data are not collected on any significant scale for 10 indicators. For another 7 indicators, the project work groups were not able to agree on a sufficiently well defined measure to even determine whether data are available. Note that 14 of the indicators in the report are marked as needing further development (see Table A.1). However, relevant data are available for almost half of these, so once the additional research is completed to clearly define these measures, a few of these indicators may move to the “with data” category.

Figure A.5 summarizes the status of data collection for the indicators in the report.