%0 Research article
%T Establishing forest inventory reference definitions for forest and growing stock: a study towards common reporting
%A Vidal, Claude
%A Lanz, Adrian
%A Tomppo, Erkki
%A Schadauer, Klemens
%A Gschwantner, Thomas
%A di Cosmo, Lucio
%A Robert, Nicolas
%D 2008
%J Silva Fennica
%V 42
%N 2
%R doi:10.14214/sf.255
%U https://silvafennica.fi/article/255
%X International agreements such as the Kyoto protocol and Convention on  Biological Diversity (1992), as well as, criteria and indicator  processes require reports on the status of nations’ forests. Any  comparison of the current status and trends of forest resources among  nations presumes that the nations’ applied definitions and concepts  produce comparable estimates of the status of forests. In spite of this,  the FAO has already collected global information for 60 years and made  noticeable efforts in creating common definitions, but forest related  data are still collected using diverse definitions, even regarding basic  concepts such as forest and forest area. A simple consequence is that  the cross-countries estimates are not comparable. The reasons behind the  differences in the definitions are diverse histories, and sometimes  different use of forests. In an ideal case, national forest inventories  should fulfil both national and international needs. In addition to the  FAO’s Forest Resources Assessment process, other efforts are made to  assess the status of forests in European countries, e.g. European Forest  Information and Communication System (EFICS). EFICS produced reports  about forest inventories but does not suggest any common definition or  method to convert estimates from one definition to another one. This  article presents principles and methods to create commonly acceptable  and adoptable definitions for forest inventories. The principles and  methods are demonstrated using two examples: the reference definitions  of forest and growing stock. The article is based on the work of COST  Action E43 (http://www.metla.fi/eu/cost/e43/).