Professor Forest Biometrics Sustainable management of forest resources depends on reliable information obtained from inventories. Forests usually cover large areas. For the vast majority of cases, complete inventories are either impossible or extremely expensive.
Cost effectiveness is a central issue in scientifically designed forest resource inventories.
Whether private or public, agencies engaged in acquiring data for decision making should aim at maximizing the amount of information per unit cost. Advances in statistics, computer science and remote sensing enable us to select specific sampling methods, which yield desired information while keeping the cost as low as possible. The picture becomes complicated, especially for public agencies, since landscape level or ecosystem management, a concept that imposes constraints on forest management, requires information other than timber, such as wildlife, aesthetics, outdoor recreation, vegetation, water, etc. Computer simulation is a powerful tool for studying the efficiency of alternative sampling designs, such as random, stratified, systematic, multiphase and multistage, to mention but a few of the available options. By relating remote sensing data to a limited number of objectively selected field measurements, a substantial reduction in the overall cost of forest inventories may be realized.