TY - JOUR

T1 - National forest inventory contributions to forest biodiversity monitoring

AU - Chirici, Cherardo

AU - McRoberts, Ronald

AU - Winter, Susanne

AU - Bertini, Roberta

AU - Brändli, Urs-Beat

AU - Asensio, Isiar Alberdi

AU - Bastrup-Birk, Annemarie

AU - Rondeux, Jacques

AU - Barsoum, Nadia

AU - Marchetti, Mario

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

N2 - Forests are the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems. National forest inventories (NFIs) are the main source of information on the status and trends of forests, but they have traditionally been designed to assess land coverage and the production value of forests rather than forest biodiversity. The primary international processes dealing with biodiversity and sustainable forest management, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Forest Europe, Streamlining European Biodiversity Indicators 2010 of the European Environmental Agency, and the Montréal Process, all include indicators related to forest biodiversity. The scope of this article is to review and present possibilities offered by NFIs to harmonize estimation of indicators useful for international forest biodiversity monitoring and reporting. We summarize key findings from Working Group 3 of Action E43 (“Harmonisation of National Forest Inventories in Europe: Techniques for Common Reporting“) of the European program Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST). We discuss definitions and techniques for harmonizing estimates of possible biodiversity indicators based on data from NFIs in Europe and the United States. We compare these possible indicators with indicators selected by international processes. The results demonstrate that NFIs can report comparable or harmonized estimates of indicators for multiple biodiversity features (forest categories, deadwood, forest age, forest structure, and forest naturalness), but for others (ground vegetation and regeneration) NFIs should invest more in harmonization efforts. On the basis of these key findings, we recommend that NFIs should represent a main component of a future global biodiversity monitoring network as urgently requested by the CBD.

AB - Forests are the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems. National forest inventories (NFIs) are the main source of information on the status and trends of forests, but they have traditionally been designed to assess land coverage and the production value of forests rather than forest biodiversity. The primary international processes dealing with biodiversity and sustainable forest management, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Forest Europe, Streamlining European Biodiversity Indicators 2010 of the European Environmental Agency, and the Montréal Process, all include indicators related to forest biodiversity. The scope of this article is to review and present possibilities offered by NFIs to harmonize estimation of indicators useful for international forest biodiversity monitoring and reporting. We summarize key findings from Working Group 3 of Action E43 (“Harmonisation of National Forest Inventories in Europe: Techniques for Common Reporting“) of the European program Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST). We discuss definitions and techniques for harmonizing estimates of possible biodiversity indicators based on data from NFIs in Europe and the United States. We compare these possible indicators with indicators selected by international processes. The results demonstrate that NFIs can report comparable or harmonized estimates of indicators for multiple biodiversity features (forest categories, deadwood, forest age, forest structure, and forest naturalness), but for others (ground vegetation and regeneration) NFIs should invest more in harmonization efforts. On the basis of these key findings, we recommend that NFIs should represent a main component of a future global biodiversity monitoring network as urgently requested by the CBD.

U2 - 10.5849/forsci.12-003

DO - 10.5849/forsci.12-003

M3 - Journal article

VL - 58

SP - 257

EP - 268

JO - Forest Science

JF - Forest Science

SN - 0015-749X

IS - 3

ER -