Risk to soil and water quality from agriculture indicator: data sources and methods, chapter 5

5. Caveats and limitations

A full description of limitations associated with individual indicators is available in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Agri-Environmental Indicator Report Series - Report #4. The limitations applying directly to the soil and water quality indices include:

• The indicator for soil contamination by trace elements was only calculated for 1981 and 2006. For all other years, an interpolated value was included in the index calculation.
• The national indices are calculated using indicator models developed at a local level, which were scaled-up to the national scale. There is little independent experimental data with which to validate or calibrate the model results.