A trend reflects how a component has changed in condition over the past five years. Trends are assessed in relation to the assessment of the corresponding component in the Outlook Report 2019 as well as other available information on the trend in that component, if available. Previous grades (2009, 2014 and 2019) and trends (2014 and 2019) are included in the assessment summary tables.
Chapters relating to factors that influence the Region’s values, risks and long-term outlook contain forward-looking assessments. In these chapters (6, 9 and 10), trends in criteria and components are forecast for the next five years and beyond.
Trends are categorised as either: improved, stable, deteriorated or no consistent trend. The category ‘no consistent trend’ is applied to a component when the available information is too variable to determine a trend. The terms ‘improved’ and ‘deteriorated’ are replaced with ‘increased’ and ‘decreased’ in assessments of impacts, threats and risks (Chapters 6 and 9).
Outlook Reports are evidence-based and peer-reviewed. To support transparency and reliability of the current grades, a level of confidence is provided. The categories used are:
- adequate high-quality evidence and high level of consensus
- limited evidence or limited consensus
- inferred, very limited evidence.
For components where the confidence level is ‘inferred, very limited evidence’, the assessment grade should be treated with some level of caution given it is based on a limited amount of published peer-reviewed literature. Inferred assessments may also be based on knowledge from managing agencies, Traditional Owners, topic experts and informed stakeholders. Confidence levels are not provided for criteria assessments, as aggregating across components is difficult and there can be a high level of variability. A confidence level is also not provided for the assessment of existing protection and management (Chapter 7) because this assessment is conducted by independent assessors and confidence levels are not currently part of that methodology.11