National
Forest
Inventory

Executive summary

General information

History

Materials

Methods

Results

Resources

Expertise

Products

Publications

Applications of results

Current events/projects

Use of SAR (radar) data

Imaging spectrometry

Dynamics of biodiversity

[Finnish]
METLA
METLA Research

National Forest Inventory Resources

Personnel

The permanent personnel consist of the project leader (Erkki Tomppo), 21 researchers of which 16 are working only in this project, 6 permanent crew leaders, 3 field data operators, 4 secreteries and 4 associates. In addition, about 10 temporary crew leaders and 30 measurement assistants are employed during field measurement seasons, from May to October.

Budget

The annual budget (1997) is about 8 million FIM (1.5 million ECU), of which 3 million FIM is spent to field measurements.

Equipment and Data Processing

Normal field data equipment with field computers are used. Some field crews have GPS receivers capable of real-time differential operation using the reference signal sent via the Radio Data System (RDS).

The AISA airborne imaging spectometer is used for data collection in a research project. The goal is to use it later in the operative inventory.

A workstation network consisting of DEC Alpha workstations (DEC Unix), DECstations (Ultrix), and VAXStations (VMS) is used for image processing and statistical computation. The network has a fast Internet connection via the Finnish University network (FUNET). The peripherals include Exabyte, DAT, and 1/2 inch tape recorders for archival and data exchange, a size A0 electrostatic plotter, and a dye sublimation printer for image hardcopies.

The IMD, GRASS, Arc/Info, and DISIMP software are used together with our own software for image processing. The SAS and BMDP packages are used for statistical analysis.