Environmental change and statistical trends.
E Marian Scott
Dept of Statistics, University of Glasgow
Many of the environmental challenges confronting society today are posed as
questions about change – is global temperature rising, how fast are headline species
declining, how do changes in ice cover in the Arctic relate to sea level rises around
Europe, how much will CO2 levels rise in the future and what is driving these
changes?
Statistical solutions to these questions require statistical modelling to
account for natural environmental variation and to quantify uncertainty in the results.
The many Environment Agencies around the world are, on a daily basis, advising on,
implementing and monitoring the effects of policies and instruments to manage
environmental change, but in 2001, the EEA in a report commented ‘how much or
how little we know about the links between environmental policy measures and their
actual impact in the environment” and “much of the information gathered is of
limited use in assessing the impact of environmental measures” ((Nigel Haigh,
foreword of Environmental Issues, Report 25/EC). More recent work has attempted
to improve policy effectiveness evaluation but this ‘is complex and requires multidisciplinary efforts, including assessment of changes in environmental quality that
have been observed’.
The ability of the scientific community to answer questions of environmental change
crucially depends on the involvement of statisticians and the application of existing
and development of new statistical methodology. The complex nature of the
environmental systems and their interactions mean that the statistical challenges are
real and non-trivial. Some current examples will be used to develop these arguments
further.