Towards an effective integration of forest inventories and natural resources surveys: the Italian perspective

International and regional efforts to define a suitable list of criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management show the new role of forestry within the environmental sector and the need for an effective integration of forest inventories in natural resources surveys. This paper examines the potential of forest inventories to support such needs, with specific reference to the Italian situation as a case study, in the enlarged framework of the European Union. In this country, where forest policy is mainly administrated at the local level, forest inventories have been on the increase since the late seventies, in spite of the many applications, a substantial sporadicalness in the adoption of inventory for forest planning and control, and a marked productive perspective can be stressed, although the high variability internal to the country in economic viability, ecological diversity, and assessment capabilities by different authorities has to be mentioned. The opportunity for simple monitoring and inventory systems focused on an overall assessment of forest attributes is devised. The field of landscape ecology can represent a common communication base to integrate the different matters in a holistic manner, solving problems in landscape planning and management. Geographic information system methodologies offer the means to operatively address this approach.