Sustainability Indicators
The Sustainable Development Indicators for Wales provide measures of everyday concerns including health, housing, jobs, crime, education and our environment. The indicators are first and foremost intended to communicate and highlight progress in key issues for sustainable development and for the priority areas, and along with other evidence help to identify where action is required. The statistics come from a range of sources and are brought together in an annual ‘In Your Pocket’ booklet which includes charts and statistical commentary on the indicators.
StatsWales is a free-to-use service that allows visitors to view, manipulate, create and download tables from the most detailed official data on Wales.
Climate and Biodiversity
Climate change and air pollution monitoring in the UK is spearheaded by the Environmental Change Network which coordinates a series of long-term, continuous monitoring stations across the country. The Welsh contribution to this site is situated at Yr Wydffa NNR (operational since 1995).
Staff of Natural Resources Wales collect, store, analyse and interpret a wealth of data based on a set of key physical, chemical and biological variables which drive and respond to environmental change and air pollution.
In 2007 a Welsh network was established with 13 new sites were established on NNRs across Wales. These have dramatically increased the geographic coverage of the monitoring effort and will focus on detecting and quantifying changes to plant, bird and butterfly indicator species. The evidence collected will be used to guide policy and management on protected sites in the future.
Measurements taken
National Nature Reserves with Environmental Change Network and Environmental Change Biodiversity Network Sites