Sustainability verifiers of forest inventories of the tropical forest of the Mato Grosso State, Brazil

Abstract

Sustainable management plans for tropical forests including wood harvesting should be based on 100 % forest inventories, according to official Brazilian standards. To evaluate the forestry work carried out in 20 sites managed under sustainable forest management plans, located in Mato Grosso state, Brazil, 140 tropical sustainability forest verifiers were analyzed, 17 of them only to monitor the details of the forest inventories, completed and ongoing. 65 % of the 17 verifiers received the annotation to carry out corrective actions within one year, 18 % urged to perform corrective actions in 60 days, 5 % had the annotation of recommended, and 12 % were subject to suspension in the execution of the respective sustainable management forest plans. The textual and cartographic information collected in the technical reports and thematic maps had field verification, allowing to know the position of the felled trees and the location of the usable trees. Official verification standards were objective enough to leave little room for the subjectivity of inventory quality assessors. The evaluation system was efficient. The inventory workers shrew an enormous lack of dendrological knowledge in relation to botanical identification.