The Natural Capital Indicators and Metrics Evidence Review (NCIMER) has been co-developed with York University in response to the call in the UK Environment Plan for the identification of suitable indicators and metrics of environmental change.
It is a searchable literature review of the environmental properties (indicators) which support the provision of ecosystem services, and the metrics (the quantitative measures of a specific indicator, with defined measurable units) used to measure these.
It was delivered through two phases: Phase 1 – Provisioning and Regulating Services and Phase 2 – Cultural services and health and wellbeing benefits. The outputs from both phases are now combined into this 2nd Edition of the tool. Each phase is supported by a Technical Report.
Natural England’s Natural Capital Indicators: for defining and measuring change in natural capital (Lusardi and others, 2018, NERR076) has been used to inform search terms for the literature review.
The tool contains evidence from over 900 scientific papers and identifies indicators across eight broad habitat types. It provides a searchable summary of the underlying evidence, and includes links to the underpinning scientific papers. Summary evidence review sheets have also been produced for each broad habitat type. As well as identifying which metrics have been used to date, the tool helps to highlight where gaps in the evidence base exist.
To help users get the best from the tool, there is a User Guide contained within.
This tool can be used in any work identifying metrics for measuring change in natural capital. It can also be used to understand the evidence base for environmental properties affecting the provision of ecosystem services.