Sustainable forestry management cannot be achieved unless it is based on real and particularly on up-to-date information of all the stands, their surroundings included.
A continuous monitoring of this major natural environment and a continuous feeding of the gathered data into a forestry information system is therefore indispensable.
This rather endless and very difficult job can only be realised on the basis of modern technologies handled by people having best information of forest.
Unfortunately new technologies, especially technologies related to data processing or electronics cannot be introduced in forestry services without difficulty. They seldom reach the grass-roots.
But it is exactly the person at the g.r. level who has the most detailed information about the forestry environment. He/she knows the localisation of the hare's lair, can show you the nests and aries, leads you to the most beautiful oak in the region, gives you the most recent information about stands, soil, welfare or decline of biodiversity.
We must give to this person man, who normally is no specialist in data processing, a simple tool allowing himself to collect, to store, to treat and to transfer the data to the central data base. We only have to familiarise him with this special kind of work. First of all data processing must be demystified. The classes of data to be collected must be limited to major variables and must be written on a checklist or introduced in an electronic notebook. Aerial or satellite photographs should be in common use for updating the classical maps. This will be the first step towards the GIS. The electronic calibrator and the electronic relascope most not be any longer handled only by academic staff. This also holds for the scanner and the digitiser. Even the introduction in forest of GPS and ultrasonics must be realised in co-operation with the ranger.
A continuous monitoring of the forest, realised by people working in the forest, will be successful
Correspondence: Pierre Schram, S4.04, CEPS/INSTEAD 1, rue de la Forêt, L - 8065, Bertrange, G.D. Luxembourg
Telefax: +352-456736