At Cecil, we take a scientific approach to nature data.

Scientific concepts

We draw on environmental science to identify the scientific concepts that best represent ecosystems, as well as the biodiversity and services they support. We use these concepts to select, document, ingest, and host datasets that can baseline and track change in nature at the site level across the globe.

Throughout this process, we adopt core scientific principles to ensure that Cecil always operates in an objective, transparent, and rigorous way — which is the only way to build trust in the datasets we support.

Below, you’ll find concept notes introducing the scientific concepts we support. We use these concept notes to:

• Provide an operational definition of a scientific concept that can be actioned with nature data;
• Determine which variables can be used to describe it;
• Assess the most powerful methods and technologies for quantifying it; and
• Curate datasets to host on the Cecil platform.

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Plant biomass

Describes the height, mass, volume, or coverage of organic matter in vegetation.

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Land use and land cover (LULC)

Describes the human and/or physical land features present at a given location.

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Deforestation [coming soon]

Describes historic, ongoing, or projected forest loss due to logging activities.

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What is a scientific approach?

Nature encompasses all living and non-living parts of an ecosystem. Ecosystems are profoundly complex, comprising many thousands of interacting components:

• Abiotic conditions → e.g. climate, geology, topography, and hydrology.
• Ecosystem structure → e.g. land cover, biomass, biodiversity, and soil carbon stocks.
• Ecosystem functioning → e.g. biogeochemical cycles, fire dynamics, and crop yield.