Waikato Environmental Indicators and Report Card

Area of Focus

General Assessments

Environmental indicators summarise complex information about our environment into key measures – which may be physical, chemical, biological or socio-economic – so that we can understand what’s happening in our environment. We measure these indicators regularly so we can detect changes in the environment over time.

Indicators

Biodiversity: Amount of native forests in different sized fragments
Native forests are likely to provide the best quality habitat for native wildlife and plants. Forest fragmentation can limit wildlife movement/occupancy and ecological processes. This indicator reports on the fragmentation of native forests as a threat to native biodiversity.
Biodiversity: Number of forest fragments in each size class
Forest fragmentation can affect richness and distribution of various wildlife and plant species. If native forest occurs primarily in small size class fragments (e.g., 10-100 Ha), it is likely that species dependent on large forest patches will be absent or in decline.
Biodiversity: Percent of the region covered in native forest, scrub and tussock (grasses) in the past and today
This indicator provides information about the change in native plant cover between some past time period(s) and the current time. This is one proxy for the amount of major habitat types for biodiversity available over time.