Contribution of large-scale forest inventories to biodiversity assessment and monitoring
Author(s)
Corona, Piermaria
Chirici, Gherardo
McRoberts, Ronald E.
Winter, Susan
Barbati, Anna
Date Issued
2011
Type
review
Abstract
Statistically-designed inventories and biodiversity monitoring programs are gaining relevance for biological
conservation and natural resources management. Mandated periodic surveys provide unique opportunities
to identify and satisfy natural resources management information needs. However, this is not an
end in itself but rather is the beginning of a process that should lead to sound decision-making in biodiversity
conservation. Forest inventories are currently evolving towards multipurpose resource surveys
and are broadening their scope in several directions: (i) expansion of the target population to include
non-traditional attributes such as trees outside the forest and urban forests; (ii) forest carbon pools
and carbon sequestration estimation; (iii) assessment of forest health; and (iv) inclusion of additional
variables such as biodiversity attributes that are not directly related to timber assessment and wood harvesting.
There is an on-going debate regarding the role of forest inventories in biodiversity assessment and
monitoring. This paper presents a review on the topic that aims at providing updated knowledge on
the current contribution of forest inventories to the assessment and monitoring of forest biodiversity
conditions on a large scale. Specific objectives are fourfold: (i) to highlight the types of forest biodiversity
indicators that can be estimated from data collected in the framework of standard forest inventories and
the implications of different sampling methods on the estimation of the indicators; (ii) to outline current
possibilities for harmonized estimation of biodiversity indicators in Europe from National Forest Inventory
data; (iii) to show the added value for forest biodiversity monitoring of framing biodiversity indicators
into ecologically meaningful forest type units; and (iv) to examine the potential of forest inventory
sample data for estimating landscape biodiversity metrics
Additional information
L'articolo è disponibile sul sito dell'editore www.elsevier.com
Citation
Corona, P. et al. 2011. Contribution of large-scale forest inventories to biodiversity assessment and monitoring. "Forest Ecology and Management" 262: 2061–2069
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