Dr Richard Tipper has blogged for The Guardian about the effects of climatic trends on supply chains. Richard discusses how a changing climate can affect the growth of crops, impacting on the sort of commodities we all take for granted such as tea, coffee or cocoa,...
Insights
Our Ecosystem Scholarship apps go live!
At the end of 2012 Ecometrica awarded two scholarships to Emily Woollen and Alice Duff to develop research from their respective PhD and Masters theses into Our Ecosystem apps. The two resulting apps demonstrate the ease with which you can use very different...
Mandatory Carbon Reporting: Announcement Delayed
The long wait for UK mandatory carbon reporting is nearly over, though Ecometrica has learned it is most likely that the regulations will go before Parliament after the Easter recess (26 March to 15 April 2013), so not within the first quarter of 2013 as previously...
Improvements to Greenhouse Gas Accounting – the Impact of Ecometrica Publications So Far
Ecometrica Publications exists to disseminate ideas and methods related to Ecometrica’s expertise in greenhouse gas accounting, and spatial data analysis. We have produced a number of papers now with suggested improvements in the field of greenhouse gas accounting,...
New Year Update on Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting
The year of mandatory greenhouse gas reporting has arrived! Ecometrica attended a workshop hosted by Defra shortly before Christmas, and there are a few updates on the timeline and nature of the Regulations. Timeline – 1 October 2013 Start Date It is increasingly...
Comparing Global Carbon Maps: A New OE App
This article was written by Dr. Edward Mitchard, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Geosciences. About half the carbon stored in terrestrial vegetation is stored in tropical forests. This store of carbon is of great importance to our climate as it undergoes...
Is There a Case for Extending Daylight Saving Time?
It’s that time of year again, for North America at least. As we turned back our clocks on November 4th, the prospect of long, dark, and dreary winter evenings caused many of us to ask once again – why is it exactly that we use Daylight Saving Time (DST)? It seems that...
Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital: Terms Matter
Rarely a day goes by without a new publication highlighting the importance of biodiversity, ecosystems and natural capital to businesses, policymakers and the like being released. This proliferation of information about these related concepts has also been...
Mapping Europe’s Changing Landscapes
Europe's land is used at an intensity which exerts increasing pressure on the functioning of natural ecosystems. Understanding the patterns of Europe's changing land cover is key to being able to manage the environmental impact of land use change. In recent decades,...
Is There a Case for Extending Daylight Saving Time?
It’s that time of year again. As we turned back our clocks on November 4th, the prospect of long, dark, and dreary winter evenings caused many of us to ask once again – why is it exactly that we use Daylight Saving Time (DST)? It seems that ever since this practice...
Green Electricity Purchasing Instruments – Are We Heading for Carbon-Gate?
Green electricity purchasing instruments or tariffs generally involve the sale of environmental attributes associated with electricity generation, such as the attribute of coming from a renewable source. Consumers may buy such instruments because they want to increase...
Timeline for Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting
The Government consultation on mandatory GHG reporting in Directors’ Reports closed on 17 October 2012. So what is the timeline from now? October to December 2012: Regulations Finalised Firstly, over the next few months Defra will consider the consultation responses...
Ecometrica Brief the Scottish Financial Sector
Ecometrica’s Chief Financial Officer Adrian Smith reporting on a recent event at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. On 29th October 2012, Ecometrica teamed up with the Carbon Disclosure Project and Scottish Financial Enterprise (a trade body for the fund management...
Cutting biofuels from food crops will increase food security, right?
The European Commission’s proposal to limit the amount of biofuels that can be sourced from food crops (mainly rapeseed, sugar beet and wheat in the case of Europe) has been welcomed by some environmental and development NGOs as beneficial to food security. The food...
Environmental Key Performance Indicators: Ecometrica’s Response to Defra
Ecometrica has responded to the Defra consultation on Environmental Key Performance Indicators. The response has been compiled by Ecometrica’s Biodiversity Analyst David Jarrett and Senior Analyst Matthew Brander. Ecometrica welcomes the draft Guidelines on...
Assets and liabilities in natural capital accounting
‘Natural capital’ is the stock of natural ecosystems which yield a flow of ecosystem services with an economic value to humanity. For example, forests sequester carbon which helps regulate the climate; healthy soils are necessary for agricultural production; wetland...
Greenhouse gas accounting is simple isn’t it?
No, not really. At a very basic level the idea of multiplying activity data like electricity consumption, by an emission factor to calculate greenhouse gas emissions means that greenhouse gas accounting is simple. But in real life this is a gross over simplification...
Simple Guide to Navigating the OE Interface
This simple guide aims to give users a quick overview of how to navigate features of the Our Ecosystem interface. It is specifically designed to help you use publicly available versions of OE, for example nbm.ourecosystem.com. Available layers can be viewed and...