Objectives and planning of forest inventories

Abstract

Forest inventories, also called forest resources assessments, can be understood as “the procedure for obtaining information on the quantity and condition of the forest resource, associated vegetation and components and many of the characteristics of the land area on which the forest is located” (Hush et al. 2003). The term “forest inventory” refers to both, a catalog of information on forests and the measurement and assessment of data on which the information is based. Forest inventory forms the foundation of forest planning and forest policy. While early designs of sustainable forest management and forest inventory focused on timber production (Hartig 1819; Cotta 1804), modern forest inventory designs support a holistic view of forest ecosystems addressing not only timber production but the multiple functions of forests as well as the need to understand the functioning mechanisms of forest ecosystems (Lund 1998; Corona et al. 2003; Köhl et al. 2006; Corona and Marchetti 2007).