Norway – Environmental management – Further development of indicators to assess the condition of the onshore ecosystems.

The ecological condition professional system is an ecological and methodical framework for assessing the ecological state of the major eco-systems. The agreement concerns the further development of indicators to assess the condition according to this framework for the ecosystems wetland, seminatural land and naturally open areas under the forest border. The procurement concerns the further development of indicators to assess ecological conditions for wetlands, semi-natural land and naturally open areas under the forest border. The work includes the development of new methods for calculating indicators of overgrowth, trenching and polling potential, as well as indicators that require information on the spreading of relevant nature types and ecosystems. In addition guidelines shall be developed for scaling and aggregating index based indicators. The development of indicators shall be coordinated across the three ecosystems to the greatest possible degree, and the use of new technology shall be assessed as a part of making data collection and analyses more efficient. We intend to enter into a contract with NINA. This gives us access to broad competence within monitoring systems, ecological data, remote measuring and modelling, and we can utilise acquired research competence from the development work connected to the ecological condition professional system up until now. The agreement period is 9 months.