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[edit] Introductory Paragraph

I suggest a more blunt definition with applications dealt with in later paragraphs.

Ecological indicators are narrow, quantitative metrics which serve as proxies for change in ecological systems too complex to apprehend more broadly.

I tried to phrase the the applications and only managed some fragments.

I think assess should appear as a verb before communicate.

assess human impact on ecological systems

I would spell out in more detail the list of stakeholders:

disparite stakeholders such as biologists, ecologists, property owners, the local community, the general public, and governmental policy makers

It would be safer to avoid that quagmire in sentence #2 by stating something from the historical / economic perspective.

indicators have always been used by societies living close to the land [you could find zillions of examples of this]

while human societies have impacted or destroyed ecological systems dating back to [quote something from Diamond] the range and scope of human activities on ecological systems has greatly expanded since the beginning of industrialism [combustion of coal] and more recently with the advent of petrochemical industrism in the first half of the 20'th century, further intensified by [a rapid increase in world population]

while briefly [I'm thinking 30 years, circa 1940-1970] the abundance of nature was considered by many as inexhaustible, it is now recognized that [nature is a common good that must be somehow managed]

the field has lately been propelled in a more quantitative direction by an increased recognition of the environment as a shared good

At this point the stage is now set to get into stakeholders, complexity of ecosystems, communication and expertise gaps, the inexact science of complex systems, etc.

Ideally that arc would be highly compressed into three or four sentences before the TOC and then after the TOC the stakeholder/political narrative greatly expanded, leading into subsections dealing with increasingly scientific and technical concerns (such as policy formulation).

I like the quote before the TOC. To use that quote before the TOC it needs to be said by somebody: According to Dr Deepdoodoo, from High And Mighty Institution, "it is difficult and often impossible ..."

I might elevate that to second sentence after my proposed blunt definition:

Ecological indicators are narrow, quantitative metrics which serve as proxies for change in ecological systems too complex to apprehend more broadly.

Followed perhaps by:

Ecological Indicators have become more prevalent/prominent in the late 20'th century as societies increasingly recognized the environment as a shared good [to serve the social need to come to consensus on how these complex resources can be best managed].

That would be a sufficient third sentence finishing the introductory paragraph before the TOC.

Even better for an encyc. treatment would be to cite the date that the first university offered an explicit program in this discipline.

Ecological indicators became a serious academic concern when the University of Forethought established the first [academic program] in 1978 [to reflect] society's increasing awareness of the environment as a shared good.

It would be helpful to identify some specific point in time when implicit concern and academic dialog tipped into becoming an explicit area of specialization and study.

That boils the opening paragraph down into:

1. narrow quantitative proxy
2. austere quote about damnable organic complexities
3. datestamped establishment of ecind as a formal academic tradition reflecting increased public awareness of the environment as a shared good

Then after the TOC you can sail off into the intractible human dimension which overlays the intractible biological dimension.

Good first cut. MaxEnt 06:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Linkage

• Added this article to disambig page for indicators.
• Added categories
• Added environmental science display box
• Added scads of "see also"

Major themes: ecology, indictors, assessment, environment, environmental science, social and human impact, policy, and institutions. Pretty much covers everything the WP has to offer on the subject.

Worthwhile to read through some of the ecological assessments to see how many ecological indicators are buried under the topsoil. If it is possible to do an ecological assessment without implicit use of indicators, what other methods compete with indicators in that role? MaxEnt 03:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Relationship to economic indicators

I read somewhere a quote to the effect that communism collapsed because it failed to correctly price economic goods, capitalism will collapse because it fails to correctly price ecological goods.

The discipline present up to their beady little eyeballs in proxy indicators is economics. The parallel between economics and ecology deepens: complex systems of interacting parts few of which can be directly measured, and hardly ever simultaneously.

Is there reason to believe that ecological indicators will emerge and ultimately obtain the same status as inflation rate, money supply, GNP, GDP, savings rates, foreign currency reserves/debt, etc.? The combination of unreliable indicators feeding into highly abstruse (and generally untested) theories earned economics it's reputation as "the dismal science". The bio- eco- sciences are equally abstuse as the most nightmarish financial derivative or Black-Scholes equation.

From the largest perspective, ecology is a generalization of economics: the practice of human economics exists within an ecological system. How far can the idea of ecology and economics as twin disciplines be taken?

Could a relationship be found between the practice of economic assessment and ecological assessment? MaxEnt 04:13, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Ecological economics. Also a journal by that name at [[1]]. If a paper grabs your interest I can probably get you the pdf. With the advent of sustainability indicators, indicator development has started to integrate multiple disciplines - ecological economics is a forum where economics and natural sciences are mixed. Mixing the unreliable and obscure with the unreliable and obscure.

Will ecological indicators gain the same status as GNP, GDP and so on? One of the key issues with indicators is their incredible diversity with outputs based a myriad of case specific conditions. Similar to economics? Very difficult (impossible?) to conglomerate indicators to the point of one or two numbers on a national/international scale and have any meaning left. Lack of information, scale issues... the list goes on. In economics arrays of comparable/compatible information are readily available at multiple scales. Not so when it comes to the natural world. Yet. wagors 05:22, 23 April 2006 (UTC)