National Forest Inventories: Contributions to Forest Biodiversity Assessments

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xviii

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2. The Need for Harmonized Estimates of Forest Biodiversity Indicators

   • Susanne Winter, Ronald E. McRoberts, Gherardo Chirici, Annemarie Bastrup-Birk, Jacques Rondeux, Urs-Beat Brändli et al.

   Pages 1-23

3. Essential Features of Forest Biodiversity for Assessment Purposes

   • Susanne Winter, Ronald E. McRoberts, Roberta Bertini, Annemarie Bastrup-Birk, Christine Sanchez, Gherardo Chirici

   Pages 25-39

4. Prospects for Harmonized Biodiversity Assessments Using National Forest Inventory Data

   • Ronald E. McRoberts, Gherardo Chirici, Susanne Winter, Anna Barbati, Piermaria Corona, Marco Marchetti et al.

   Pages 41-97

5. The Common NFI Database

   • Gherardo Chirici, Roberta Bertini, Davide Travaglini, Nicola Puletti, Ugo Chiavetta

   Pages 99-119

6. Harmonization Tests

   • Gherardo Chirici, Ronald E. McRoberts, Susanne Winter, Anna Barbati, Urs-Beat Brändli, Meinrad Abegg et al.

   Pages 121-190

7. Summary and Conclusions

   • Gherardo Chirici, Susanne Winter, Ronald E. McRoberts

   Pages 191-202

8. Back Matter

   Pages 203-206

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Forest biodiversity is crucial to the ecological, economic, and social well-being of earth’s civilisations. Unfortunately, however, forest biodiversity is threatened to a serious degree in nearly all countries. Therefore, many countries have agreed to be parties to international agreements focused on maintaining, restoring, and monitoring biodiversity; further, these countries have agreed to report to international bodies on forest biodiversity status and trends. NFIs are the primary source of large-scale information available for this purpose, but the large variety of definitions, protocols, sampling designs, and plot configurations used by NFIs makes comparable international reporting extremely difficult. This book presents the results of Working Group 3 of COST Action E43 in the development of harmonization techniques for common reporting of estimates of forest biodiversity indicators using NFI data. Harmonization tests were carried out on a large common data base containing raw NFI data from 13 European countries and the USA. With its collection of practical examples for the estimation of forest biodiversity indicators, it's a practical tool for anyone involved in forest inventories and in forest resource monitoring and management as well as for those involved in biodiversity assessment and reporting.

• Forest biodiversity
• Harmonization
• National forest inventories

Aus den Rezensionen:

 “... Das Werk zeigt, was mit Waldinventuren derzeit möglich ist, ohne die konzeptionelle Eigenständigkeit der nationalen Erhebungen infrage zu stellen. Sie ziehen ... klare Schlüsse, welche Ansätze zukunftsträchtig sind und welche nicht. Auch die Empfehlungen, wie noch bestehende Schwierigkeiten auszuräumen sind, erscheinen sehr umsetzungsorientiert. Aus diesem Grund ist das Buch vor allem für jene Leser empfehlenswert, die sich mit grossräumigem Biodiversitätsmonitoring im Wald beschäftigen und nach methodischen Lösungen suchen, die international kompatibel sind.“ (Christoph Bühler, in: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Forstwesen, 2011, Vol. 162, Issue 9, S. 352)

• , Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie per, Università degli Studi del Molise, Pesche, Italy

  Gherardo Chirici

• , Ökologie, Technische Universität München, Freising, Germany

  Susanne Winter

• Northern Research Station, Forest Inventory & Analysis Unit, US Forest Service, St. Paul, USA

  Ronald E. McRoberts

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