Take five: about the beat and the bar of annual and 5-year periodic national forest inventories

Key message

International forest reporting processes and increasing forest disturbances delineate new requirements regarding the information delivered by national forest inventories (NFI), with implications on their sampling strategies. An original comparative review of the sampling designs of 6 pioneer NFI programs being both annual and 5-year periodic evidences a set of common principles used to meet these demands, but also marked implementation differences, and open questions. Bases for a common framework and persisting research needs are highlighted. Developing virtual forest sampling simulation facilities at large scale is a critical challenge.

Keywords
Forest inventory; Spatial Survey; Sampling design; Interpenetrating panel; Annual inventory; Cycle; Periodicity; Estimation; Monitoring

Publication
Bontemps, JD., Bouriaud, O. Take five: about the beat and the bar of annual and 5-year periodic national forest inventories. Annals of Forest Science 81, 53 (2024).
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13595-024-01268-1

Handling Editor
Andreas Bolte

Topical Collection
This article is part of the Topical Collection “ARBRE: Documenting rapid changes occurring in forest socio-ecosystems”
https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/arbre