Quick Dips

Environmental Reporting

Getting reliable, up-to-date environmental information can be a simple matter. But you have to know where to look amongst the large number of organisations that collect environmentally-related data. Things may be a little easier soon with proposals for a comprehensive shared database.

The Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and the Department of Statistics are heading a multi-agency project to establish State of the Environment Reporting in New Zealand. The SER project will be based around a small central unit which will hold data summaries. The unit will also be able to tell the user where to find details on any particular subject.

"There's a lot of money being spent on monitoring, but the data is often being very poorly used," says Eddy Goldberg, MfE research coordinator. He hopes that the summaries and source material information will enable more informed decisions to be taken in the future.

Euan Nicol, of the Department of Conservation, is keen to see the department's expanding database facilities linked up nationally. DOC is currently collating a huge amount of information about specific sites it has surveyed over the last few years. Later this year they plan to add management software which will give them a powerful information tool, Nicol says.

By linking DOC's system with those operated by the DSIR and other government agencies, a broad range of environmental information will become available.

"A lot of scientific information is in people's heads," Nicol notes. "We want to make it more accessible."