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                       Silva Fennica 42(2) research articles
                                              www.metla.fi/silvafennica · ISSN 0037-5330
                                   The Finnish Society of Forest Science · The Finnish Forest Research Institute
                   Establishing Forest Inventory Reference 
                   Definitions for Forest and Growing Stock: 
                   a Study towards Common Reporting
                   Claude Vidal, Adrian Lanz, Erkki Tomppo, Klemens Schadauer, Thomas Gschwantner, 
                   Lucio di Cosmo and Nicolas Robert
                   Vidal, C., Lanz, A., Tomppo, E., Schadauer, K., Gschwantner, T., di Cosmo, L. & Robert, N. 2008. Estab-
                   lishing forest inventory reference definitions for forest and growing stock: a study towards 
                   common reporting. Silva Fennica 42(2): 247–266.
                   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 cross-countries 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 (http://www.metla.fi/eu/cost/e43/).
                   Keywords National forest inventories, reference definitions, growing stock, harmonisation, 
                   analytical decomposition
                   Addresses Vidal & Robert: Inventaire Forestier National, Château des Barres, Nogent-sur-
                   Vernisson, France; Lanz: WSL/FNP, Abteilung Landschaftsinventuren, Birmensdorf, Swit-
                   zerland; Tomppo: Finnish Forest Research Institute, Vantaa Research Unit, Vantaa, Finland; 
                   Schadauer & Gschwantner: Bundesamt und Forschungszentrum für Wald, Wien, Austria; 
                   di Cosmo: ISAFA, Villazzano, Italy   E-mail claude.vidal@ifn.fr
                   Received 10 August 2007 Revised 4 January 2008 Accepted 11 January 2008
                   Available at http://www.metla.fi/silvafennica/full/sf42/sf422247.pdf
                                                            247
                    Silva Fennica 42(2), 2008                                                                      research articles
                    1 Introduction                                          (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United 
                                                                            Nations)  Forest  Resources  Assessment  (FRA) 
                                                                            (http://www.fao.org/forestry/site/1191/en/).
                    1.1  Need for Harmonised Forest Information               FAO has compiled the Forest Resources Assess-
                         at the International Level                         ment  (FRA)  at  the  world  level  (Global  FRA 
                                                                            or  GFRA) and UNECE/FAO (United Nations 
                    The role of forests and forestry varies among           Economic Commission for Europe) has com-
                    European countries. Industrial use of timber is         piled the Temperate and Boreal Forest Resources 
                    still the main benefit of forests in many Euro-         Assessment (TBFRA) from NFIs since 1946. The 
                    pean countries, while the role of forests in global     first  FRA report was published in 1948 (FAO 
                    carbon balance as well as in non-wood goods             1948). FAO’s FRA work is notably assisted and 
                    and services – including protection, recreational       supported by expert consultations, Kotka I to V, 
                    aspects and biodiversity – is gaining more impor-       the advisory board and regional teams of spe-
                    tance especially in urbanised societies.                cialists,  e.g.,  the  TBFRA  Team  of  Specialists 
                       The need for information about forest and its        and the UNECE/FAO secretariat in Geneva. The 
                    functions at both the national and international        countries are asked to report estimates according 
                    levels is increasing. Traditionally, forest infor-      to the commonly agreed FRA definitions. If the 
                    mation has been collected through user-driven           FRA and the national definitions differ, coun-
                    national forest inventories (NFIs). The NFIs have       tries have to report the process used to derive 
                    different histories in different countries. Various     FRA estimates. A new feature in FRA 2005 was 
                    forms of information were gathered in many coun-        the prediction and extrapolation of the data to 
                    tries (e.g. Belgium, France, United Kingdom) in         selected time points, 1990, 2000 and 2005 (FAO 
                    19th century, but systematic assessments based on       2005). Common definitions had to be applied to 
                    sampling started in the 20th century. In Europe,        data in all time points. In many cases, FRA 2005 
                    the first sample-based inventories began in the         and also FRA 2000 definitions were adopted after 
                    Nordic countries in the early 1920’s. Many other        1990 or even after 2000, or have not been adopted 
                    countries followed from the 1960’s to the 1990’s.       at all (FAO 2005, FAO 2000). The lack of tools to 
                    Today, sampling inventories are conducted in most       convert data from national definitions to the FAO 
                    European Union (EU) countries. However, some            FRA definitions implied that the final reported 
                    European countries still gather national data by        results are not comparable.
                    aggregating stand inventories originally designed         Global  Forest  Resource  Assessments  2000 
                    for  management  planning  purposes.  The  total        and 2005 (FAO 2000, FAO 2005) included sev-
                    number of field plots visited in Europe is over         eral new variables to meet the new information 
                    500 000. As a result, the NFIs are major informa-       needs. These new variables have been planned 
                    tion sources of forest information in Europe in         and defined in expert level meetings organised by 
                    terms of precision and exhaustiveness.                  FAO and UNECE/FAO. FRA 2000 was the first 
                       With the changed role of forests, the scope          assessment to use a homogeneous set of global 
                    of  NFIs has broadened and new variables for            definitions and it is, to date, the most comprehen-
                    assessment have been introduced to address both         sive assessment of global forest resources. Yet, 
                    national needs and the need for common report-          the FRA 2000 and FRA 2005 reports indicate 
                    ing at the international level. The needs emerge        severe problems in the harmonisation of some 
                    from international conventions and policy proc-         variables, not only forest and volume of growing 
                    esses,  such  as  the  Kyoto  protocol  addressing      stock, but also definitions for natural forests (no 
                    climate change. In the framework of the Minis-          human intervention), forest available for wood 
                    terial Conference on the Protection of Forests in       supply and forest area by protection categories. 
                    Europe (MCPFE) (http://www.mcpfe.org/), the             Also, implementing the harmonised definition of 
                    European Countries and the EU have agreed on            base line variables (e.g. forest) in practical data 
                    35 indicators, for the evaluation of the forest man-    collection has been problematic.
                    agement sustainability. Many of these indicators          The  need  for  harmonised  European  forest 
                    originate from NFIs and are reported in the FAO’s       information is critical with the development of 
                    248
                    Vidal et al.                                 Establishing Forest Inventory Reference Definitions for Forest and Growing Stock:  …
                    international conventions and reporting activities        and not all of them were sufficiently harmonised 
                    on topics involving forestry, e.g. the Convention         between the NFIs in European countries.
                    on Biological Diversity (Convention ... 1992),              A significant number of European countries par-
                    the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change             ticipated in project FAIR CT98 4045, funded by 
                    (IPCC 2003), the UN Framework Convention on               the European Commission on ‘Scale Dependent 
                    Climate Change (United Nations 1992) or the               Monitoring of Non-Timber Forest Resource based 
                    Kyoto protocol. Some Europe-wide data collec-             on Indicators assessed in Various Scale’ (Scale-
                    tion systems exist, e.g. ICP Forests (International       dependent monitoring… 2003). The project iden-
                    Co-operative Programme on assessment and mon-             tified appropriate characteristics and indicators 
                    itoring of air pollution effects on Forests), carried     applicable over different ecological zones. Large 
                    out since 1994 (ICP-Forests 2007), or LUCAS               area harmonised forest resource information is 
                    (Eurostat 2000) and CORINE Landcover (Bütt-               presented in the report of the ‘Bionord’ project, 
                    ner et al. 2002), but none of them can provide            funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers (Stok-
                    adequate data to meet the actual needs and to             land et al. 2003).
                    cover, at the same time, different scales and a             The European office for the development of 
                    long period.                                              CoOperation in the field of Scientific and Techni-
                       As a result, one of the solutions for providing        cal research (COST 2007) supported several coop-
                    data  at  the  international  level  covering  major      erations of European institutes. COST Actions E4 
                    forestry interests, like wood production, biodi-          “Forest Reserves Research Network” (Parviainen 
                    versity or carbon pools, is to use NFI data that          et al. 1999) and E27 “Protected Forests in Europe 
                    will eventually be combined with data from other          – analysis and harmonisation” (Frank et al. 2007) 
                    monitoring systems. But this implies that we will         have provided valuable information for improv-
                    have to face the same difficulties as the FAO for         ing the harmonisation of protection categories in 
                    the FRA: practices and definitions differ between         close cooperation with the TBFRA national cor-
                    countries. As a consequence, the harmonisation            respondents (COST E4 1999, COST E27 2007). 
                    of NFI results is required to take advantage of the       These Actions improved the harmonisation level 
                    quality of their assessment at a scale larger than        of  protection  categories  and  the  definition  for 
                    the national level.                                       natural forests, which are important elements of 
                                                                              sustainable forestry. These results have been uti-
                                                                              lised in the context of the Ministerial Conference 
                    1.2  Earlier Research on Common Practices                 on the Protection of Forest in Europe (MCPFE).
                         in Europe                                              Outcomes of earlier research on common prac-
                                                                              tices showed that harmonisation in the field of for-
                    The EU Council Regulation (EEC) No 1615/89                estry could provide good results, but much work 
                    extended by Council Regulation (EEC) No 400/94            had to be done concerning basic NFI definitions 
                    established  a  European  Forestry  Information           to be able to provide harmonised results.
                    and Communication System (EFICS) (European 
                    Communities 1997). The objective of EFICS was 
                    to collect comparable and objective information           1.3 ENFIN and COST Action E43
                    on the structure  and  operation  of  the  forestry 
                    sector in the community. Within this context, the         In order to respond to the need for harmonised 
                    European Commission entrusted the European                information at the European level, representa-
                    Forest Institute (EFI), in 1996, with a planning          tives of the European National Forest Inventories 
                    task  with  the  overall  aim  to  analyse  in  detail    established an informal network called ENFIN 
                    the  sources  of  forest  resource  statistics  in  the   – European National Forest Inventory Network. 
                    EU Member States. The EFICS study produced                ENFIN initiated an EU COST Action project, 
                    detailed information on differences and similari-         to  work  towards  to  the  goal  that  NFIs  would 
                    ties among NFIs in EU countries and some other            be able to provide comparable forest resource 
                    countries in Europe. It was found that there is a         information. COST Action E43 was launched in 
                    set of key variables of interest to all stakeholders,     June of 2004. Twenty-seven European countries 
                                                                                                                               249
                     Silva Fennica 42(2), 2008                                                                        research articles
                     have joined the action (Fig. 1). The total area of 
                                                                    2
                     the countries in the Action is 4 374 680 km  and 
                     the total forest area is estimated to be 1 534 210 
                        2
                     km . Furthermore, United States Department of 
                     Agriculture, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) 
                     Program and New Zealand, Ministry of Environ-
                     ment, Carbon Monitoring System have joined 
                     COST Action E43 as non-cost participants.
                       The findings of the EFICS study provided a 
                     good baseline for COST Action E43. Further, the 
                     study has been followed by developing a proto-
                     type of a European Forest Information System 
                     (EFIS) for the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the 
                     European Commission (Contract No 17186-2000-
                     12 F1ED ISP FI), aiming at resource discovery 
                     and data presentation.
                       Since the EFICS study, new countries and new 
                     forest information needs have emerged and the 
                     scope of forest inventories has widened. More-
                     over,  many  countries  changed  the  design  and 
                     data collection system of their NFI. Currently, 
                     one of the most important tasks of NFIs, in addi-       Fig. 1. 27 European countries participating in the COST 
                     tion to providing data for building national for-           Action E43.
                     estry plans and assessing their sustainability, is to 
                     produce information on forest carbon pools and 
                     carbon pool changes. The level of harmonisa-            harmonised and transparent forest resource infor-
                     tion in measurement and estimation procedures           mation, and 2) to promote the use of scientifically 
                     related  to  carbon  balance was very low when          sound and validated methods in forest inventory 
                     COST Action E43 was established. The example            designs, data collection and data analysis. The 
                     of carbon balance reporting emphasises that there       Working Groups of COST Action E43 collected, 
                     is a need for an international forum where Euro-        analysed and will distribute information concern-
                     pean NFIs can respond to new information needs,         ing currently applied definitions, measurement 
                     discuss and further develop scientifically sound        practices and methods to improve the dialogue 
                     estimation procedures and definitions related to        among NFIs on the one hand and between NFIs 
                     both traditional and new variables. Another issue       and NFI data users on the other.
                     is measuring and monitoring biodiversity in such           The ultimate goal is to enable the creation of 
                     a way that the results are comparable over many         the European forestry information services from 
                     countries.                                              the national level inventories, so that the benefits 
                                                                             from inventories will be improved, promoting 
                                                                             the advantage of local knowledge and satisfying 
                     1.4 The Concept of “Reference Definition”               the local requirements together with international 
                                                                             requirements. The goal is also to maximise the 
                     The main objective of COST Action E43 is to             synergy among NFIs and European and global 
                     improve and harmonise the concepts and defini-          level processes and policies that require forestry 
                     tions of the existing national forest inventories in    information.
                     Europe in such a way that the inventories will pro-        The first step towards harmonisation is to define 
                     vide comparable forest resource information. The        the target. In our case, the target is to provide 
                     other objectives are, 1) to support new inventories     harmonised estimates of relevant variables. Each 
                     so that they will meet national, European and           estimate is the result of the assessment of a vari-
                     global level requirements in supplying up-to-date,      able (e.g. area, volume, and mass) for a clearly 
                     250
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...E silva fennica research articles www metla fi silvafennica issn the finnish society of forest science institute establishing inventory reference definitions for and growing stock a study towards common reporting claude vidal adrian lanz erkki tomppo klemens schadauer thomas gschwantner lucio di cosmo nicolas robert c k t l n estab lishing international agreements such as kyoto protocol convention on biological diversity well criteria indicator processes require reports status nations forests any comparison current trends resources among presumes that applied concepts produce comparable estimates in spite this fao has already collected global information years made noticeable efforts creating but related data are still using diverse even regarding basic area simple consequence is cross countries not reasons behind differences histories sometimes different use an ideal case national inventories should fulfil both needs addition to s assessment process other assess european g communicati...

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