The Nature Index (NI) was established to provide an overview of the state and development of biodiversity in the major ecosystems in Norway, the marine, limnic (freshwater) and terrestrial ecosystems, and thereby measure progress towards the goal of halting the loss of biodiversity.
A number of indicators were chosen to represent the state of biodiversity. 125 scientists from various disciplines provided data and/or expert judgements, or modelled data for 309 indicators representing various aspects of biological diversity, such as trophic levels, key species and threatened and common species. In order to assemble all the data into an index, a reference value was estimated for each indicator.
This reflects an ecologically sustainable value for the indicator. The nature index displays any divergence from the reference states. This report gives a brief presentation of the NI framework, the background and context, and the implementation and main results for Norway.