Establishing forest inventory reference definitions for forest and growing stock: a study towards common reporting

Abstract

International agreements such as the Kyoto protocol and Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), as well as, criteria and indicator processes require reports on the status of nations' forests. Any comparison of the current status and trends of forest resources among nations presumes that the nations' applied definitions and concepts produce comparable estimates of the status of forests. In spite of this, the FAO has already collected global information for 60 years and made noticeable efforts in creating common definitions, but forest related data are still collected using diverse definitions, even regarding basic concepts such as forest and forest area. A simple consequence is that the crosscountries estimates are not comparable. The reasons behind the differences in the definitions are diverse histories, and sometimes different use of forests. In an ideal case, national forest inventories should fulfil both national and international needs. In addition to the FAO's Forest Resources Assessment process, other efforts are made to assess the status of forests in European countries, e.g. European Forest Information and Communication System (EFICS). EFICS produced reports about forest inventories but does not suggest any common definition or method to convert estimates from one definition to another one. This article presents principles and methods to create commonly acceptable and adoptable definitions for forest inventories. The principles and methods are demonstrated using two examples: the reference definitions of forest and growing stock. The article is based on the work of COST Action E43 (

The role of European National Forest Inventories for international forestry reporting

“…ENFIN plays an important role for all international reporting processes. Together with the COST Office and the JRC from the EC, NFIs have built reference definitions (Vidal et al 2008), bridges to convert national data into comparable ones and then tested this methodology in real situations (Tomter et al 2012). This way of working could be a harmonization benchmark for UN regions of the world outside Europe with the ambition to be as closed as possible in terms of definitions between the different regions to enhance comparability within and among regions.…”

“…The main objective was achieved through the development of agreed common inventory definitions. The Action developed and agreed upon "reference definitions" (Vidal et al 2008) as the formal basis for harmonization. The methodological approach not only needs a reference definition but also a description of the full process involved.…”

“…a questionnaire in order to explore and highlight the differences between the definitions applied in the NFIs. The enquiry is followed by an analytical decomposition of these national definitions into criteria and a description of the differing national thresholds (Vidal et al 2008). As an illustration, the example of an individual tree which is the basic entity for Growing Stock (GS) and biomass estimation can be taken.…”

Common tree definitions for national forest inventories in Europe

“…These reference definitions are derived from analysis of existing national and international definitions. They take into account the principles of neutrality, objectivity, practicability, sustainability, clearness, acceptability and independence of measurement devices (Vidal et al 2008). Reference definitions that meet international requirements are recommendations for existing and emerging NFIs.…”

Bridging National and Reference Definitions for Harmonizing Forest Statistics

“…For this purpose, common reference definitions generally are proposed, and parties that do not collect data according to these definitions must develop conversion methods. The criteria for a reference definition are given in Vidal et al (2008). In this context, it should be noted that not only the harmonised estimates as such are important but also the corresponding uncertainty estimates.…”