Dear Colleagues,
We recently had a heated debate with the forestry administration on whether
ecological evaluation should be a component of regular forest inventory.
Those who support the idea thought ecological evaluation could be easily
integrated with the regular forest inventory and provided valuable
information. Those who against the idea felt that the addition of ecological
investigation would interfere with the main purpose of regular forest
inventory, which is to monitor the growth of forests, and would add burdens
to field workers.
Currently in a pilot project the following factors were investigated along
with the regular forest inventory: Forest ecological function index, which
is a composite index calculated from timber volume, cover rate, average tree
height, species composition and other factors; Forest health classes, which
include four classes from unhealthy to health based on the growth of trees;
Biodiversity indexes, which include diversity of forest types, diversity of
species, diversity of age classes; Naturalness, which measures how close is
the structure of the forest to the climax community in the region;
Fragmentation index, which is represented as the number of forest patches.
I want to hear your advices on the following issues:
1. Should ecological evaluation be included in regular forest
inventories or should it be done in separate investigations?
2. If you believe that ecological evaluation should be included in
regular inventories, which factors should be investigated? Any opinion on
the current factors?
3. If you knows a good literature resource which has discussed this
issue, please kindly share with us.
Thank you very much for your help!
Jun Yang, PhD
Professor of Forestry
Beijing Forestry University
P.O.Box 47
No. 35 Qinghua Donglu
Haidian District, Beijing 100083
China
