Monitoring systems

Biodiversity monitoring is to observe and check the changes in the status and demographics of resources, species, habitats, or ecological communities. Monitoring provides a record to track trends in biodiversity over time and is carried out to reinforce knowledge of the ecological system, to raise public and political awareness of environmental issues and stimulate action through the reporting of these trends. A range of processes exert pressures on biodiversity.

A climate change monitoring system integrates satellite observations, ground-based data and forecast models to monitor and forecast changes in the weather and climate. A historical record of spot measurements is built up over time, which provides the data to enable statistical analysis and the identification of mean values, trends and variations. The better the information available, the more the climate can be understood and the more accurately future conditions can be assessed, at the local, regional, national and global level.

Description

Water resource assessment (WMA) is a classic tool used in Integrated Water Resources Management.