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- Reliable information on forest resources since 1920 -
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| Photo: Metla/Erkki Oksanen |
The National Forest Inventory is a monitoring system that produces
information concerning national and regional
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forest resources - volume, growth and quality of growing stock,
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land use structure and forest ownership,
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forest health,
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biodiversity of forests and
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forest carbon stocks and their changes.
The national forest inventories form an unique time serie of the development of forests in Finland: The first NFI in Finland was carried out already in 1920's (NFI1 1921-1924). It was among the first inventories in the world based on statistical sampling. Since
then NFIs have been made regularly in 5-10 years cycles. The latest forest statistics are based on the 10th NFI whose field measurements were started in summer 2004.
Forest resource information produced by NFIs are based on extensive field measurements. In first inventories, lines through the country were surveyd but in recent inventories systematic sampling and field plot measurements have been used. The field plots are located in clusters that form a regular network over the whole country.
Based on the field data, reliable forest statisctis can be calculated for
the whole country and for large areas of over 200 000 hectares, like regional
Forestry Centres. In order to provide forest information for smaller areas, e.g.
municipalities, an inventory method based on satellite images was developed at
the end of the 1980's. The multi-source NFI
utilises several data sources: field measurements, satellite images and digital
maps. With this method, forest statistics and thematic maps can be produced for any
given area.
The forest statistics and other information produced by the NFI are videly used for
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Forest policy making at national and international levels
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Regional and national forest management planning
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Planning of forest industry investments
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Assessing sustainability of forestry and in forest certification
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Research material
Nowadays also many international statistics (e.g. FAO and Eurostat),
processes (e.g. Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests
in Europe, MCPFE) and agreements (e.g. Kioto protocol) require information
about development of forest resources.
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