Advances in Forest Inventory for Sustainable Forest Management and Biodiversity Monitoring

In the past the focus of productive functions of forests and rendered the assessment of information forest resource assessments was put on the assessment of the inside forested areas sufficient. The need to monitor the sustainability of yield made permanent surveys a widespread tool in forest surveys. Nowadays the public awareness concerning environmental issues and forests and the information needs expressed by decision makers requires a shift from production oriented forest resource assessments towards assessments that provide information on the multiple functions of forests. Only a limited amount of information can be provided by adding a set of new attributes to the list of attributes commonly used in assessing the productive function of forests and utilizing their survey designs. The diverse information needs that have to be satisfied by multi-resource forest surveys require the adoption of new assessment and survey approaches and the extension of assessments from forests to landscapes. This paper reviews a selection of methodological approaches recently presented for the assessment of the multiple functions of forests.