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Zeng et al. Forest Ecosystems (2015) 2:23
DOI 10.1186/s40663-015-0047-2
RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access
The national forest inventory in China:
history - results - international context
1* 2 3 4,5,6
WeiSheng Zeng , Erkki Tomppo , Sean P. Healey and Klaus V. Gadow
Abstract
Background: National forest resource assessments and monitoring, commonly known as National Forest
Inventories (NFI’s), constitute an important national information infrastructure in many countries.
Methods: This study presents details about developments of the NFI in China, including sampling and plot design,
and the uses of alternative data sources, and specifically
reviews the evolution of the national forest inventory in China through the 20th and 21st centuries, with some
reference to Europe and the US;
highlights the emergence of some common international themes: consistency of measurement; more efficient
sampling designs; implementation of improved technology; expansion of the variables monitored; scientific
transparency;
presents an example of how China’s expanding NFI exemplifies these global trends.
Results: Main results and important changes in China’s NFI are documented, both to support continued trend
analysis and to provide data users with historical perspective.
Conclusions: New technologies and data needs ensure that the Chinese NFI, like the national inventories in other
countries, will continue to evolve. Within the context of historical change and current conditions, likely directions
for this evolution are suggested.
Keywords: China; Europe; USA; National forest inventories; Forest inventory and analysis
Background Additional demands, including information on forest
National forest resource assessment and monitoring, ecosystem health, are constantly emerging and new tech-
commonly known as National Forest Inventory (NFI), nology is applied to meet these challenges. Internationally,
has become an important part of the national informa- there is great diversity regarding definitions, sampling
tion infrastructure in many countries. NFI assessments designs, reporting protocols and error estimation. Defini-
provide an essential service, reconciling available re- tions and specifications may also change over time in one
sources with national priorities related to timeliness, country. Substantial efforts have been made to meet the
precision, and forest values of interest. As a noun, the new challenges. Forest health monitoring has become an
word ‘inventory’ refers to a detailed list of articles ac- essential part of the inventories in many countries. Proper-
cording to their properties with a commercial origin. ties include symptom description, causal agent, and degree
As a verb, the word refers to the process of construct- of damage. Inventories have also added measurements
ing that list. In a forest inventory, the tabulated informa- and assessments of biodiversity indicators, such as dead
tion generally includes estimates for trees, tree properties and decaying wood and key habitats (Tomppo et al.
and forests, often on the basis of areal units (Loetsch and 2010a). Collaborative projects to reach agreement on
Haller 1973; Davis et al. 2001; Tomppo et al. 2010b) and is common definitions and to make inventory results
regarded as reliable and adequate for its intended purposes. comparable highlighted differences in FAO definitions
(UNFCCC LULUCF COSTAction E43 2015; Tomppo
et al. 2010a; Lanz et al. 2010). The involvement of
* Correspondence: zengweisheng@sohu.com experts from both organizations made it possible to make
1
Academy of Forest Inventory and Planning, State Forestry Administration, good progress towards common definitions, e.g., in land
Beijing 100714, China
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article class and carbon pool definitions. The adoption of new
©2015 Zeng et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver
(http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Zeng et al. Forest Ecosystems (2015) 2:23 Page 2 of 16
definitions takes time and needs to be coordinated with a in many countries, although new inventories are being initi-
new inventory round. A constant awareness and work of ated all the time.
the harmonisation of the concepts as well as the use of The sampling design in the first inventories in the three
common definitions is therefore necessary. Before the new Nordic countries had some similarities and also some dif-
definitions are really in use, some kind of intermediate tools ferences. All inventories used lines or strips passing through
maybeneeded (Ståhl et al. 2012). countries or country regions (Ilvessalo 1927; Tomppo et al.
The loss of forest cover and forest degradation, especially 2011). The intervals between the lines varied by regions de-
in many developing countries, has become a problem of pending on the variability of forests and land use. Norway
international concern, particularly in view of global warm- and Sweden employed strip surveys: all trees over a certain
ing and high CO emissions (IPCC 2015). Inventories of diameter threshold were callipered on the strips with a
2
land use and land use change, as well as biomass stock width of 10 m (Tomter et al. 2010; Axelsson et al. 2010).
changes assessments, are integral tools in addressing these The first NFI in Finland employed lines and visual assess-
problems. The objective of this study is to describe the ment on the lines as well sample plots with exact mesure-
development of the national forest inventory in China, and ments and also with visual assessments on the plots, the
to present the most recent estimates of the basic forest latter one to calibrate the visual assessments (Ilvessalo
resource parameters, as well as the changes over time. Ref- 1927; Tomppo et al. 2011). All three countries changed
erence to forest resource inventories in some European the sampling designs later to utilize clusters of plots:
countries, the FIA in the United States as well as the Norway and Sweden in their inventories in 1957–1964
National Forest Assessment and Monitoring by FAO pro- and 1952–1964, respectively, and Finland in the fifth
vides an international perspective. inventory in 1964–1970. All inventories used only tempor-
ary plots first and later either a combination of permanent
and temporary plots or only permanent plots. The
Development of NFI’s in Europe Norwegian and Swedish NFIs have used fixed radius
The history of forest inventories dates back to the end of plots while the Finnish NFI angle count plots from
the Middle Ages when intensive use of forest resources 1964 until 2013. Concentric plots with two radii were
first led to wood shortages which, in turn, forced users adopted in the Finnish NFI in 2014.
to assess timber resources, particularly near towns and Lawrence et al. (2010) gives a concise summary of the
mines (Loetsch and Haller 1973; Tomppo et al. 2010b). sampling designs in European countries and also in coun-
The first information collected for these purposes con- tries contributing the European Cost Action E43 and the
cerned forest area and crude estimates of growing stock. country book written in the Action (Tomppo et al. 2011).
The first inventories were often local with the aim of Most of the countries use either detached field sample plots
assessing the available timber resources for specific pur- or clusters of plots. The forest area represented by one plot
poses and were often conducted by the timber users, e.g. varied from 50 ha in Walloon region in Belgium and plan-
commercial companies (Loetsch and Haller 1973; Davis tations in Iceland to 2400 ha in USA and 267,700 ha in
et al. 2001). It soon became obvious that such inventor- Canada. There is quite a high diversity also in estimation
ies could not easily be used to compile national level methods, particularly in estimating the increment and the
forest information for purposes of formulating national drain of trees. The country reports in the book by Tomppo
forest policy; thus, NFIs were initiated. et al. (2010a) presents more detailed descriptions of the
Sample-based national forest inventories were initiated inventory methods by countries and the changes in the
in the Nordic countries in the late 1910s and early 1920s, designs.
but were not introduced in other European countries until New demands for forest inventories require timely
after World War II: in the late 1940s in the German and accurate spatially explicit information. Forest inven-
Democratic Republic; in 1958 in France; in the 1960s in tory groups have employed remotely sensed data for
Austria; and in the 1980s in Switzerland. The early national several decades to meet the requirements in a cost-
inventories in the Nordic countries included not only in- effective way, first using aerial photographs and later
formation about areas, volume and increment of growing also satellite images (Spurr 1960). The increasing avail-
stock and the amount of timber, but also age, size and spe- ability of aerial photography in digital form and the
cies structure of forests, silvicultural status of forests, ac- ease of integration with auxiliary and other georefer-
complished and needed cutting and silvicultural regimes enced data (GIS data) has greatly facilitated the use of
(Ilvessalo 1927). The purpose was to provide information aerial photographs (McRoberts and Tomppo 2007).
for forest authorities, timber users, and planners who devel- NFI country reports (Tomppo et al. 2010a) show that
oped national forest policies. Some European countries aerial photography is still widely used by European
have only recently introduced sample-based inventories. At NFIs. Koch (2013) gives reasons for continued use
the global level, national forest inventories are still lacking of aerial photography, suchaslongtraditions,high
Zeng et al. Forest Ecosystems (2015) 2:23 Page 3 of 16
spatial resolution, greater probability of acquiring computers were making it possible to automate the calcula-
cloud free data within a specific time window as well tion and tabling of volume estimates. This technology also
as smaller areas and fragmented land use in European supported compilation of data across many inventories,
countries compared to, e.g., larger non-European and in 1965, the USDA published what, according to Labau
countries such as the USA, Canada, or countries in et al. (1992)), was the first truly nationwide forest survey
South America. report (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1965).
The use of satellite images, based on NFI field data In addition to trends toward more efficient and more
dates back to 1980, first for forest mapping in stand- nationally consistent sampling and compilation, there
level inventories in an experimental way and later oper- were social and legislative developments that motivated
ationally at the national level in Finland and Sweden, the inventory to move beyond its roots in timber to
and increasingly for spatialisation and modeling in the assessment of a wider variety of forest resources. Public
1990s and 2000s (Reese et al. 2003; Tomppo et al. appreciation of non-timber forest resources such as water,
2008a), as well as for regional inventories in the USA habitat, and recreation use grew during the 1970s. The
(McRoberts et al. 2002; McRoberts 2012). Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act
The current trend is to use multi-resolution and multi- of 1974 (RPA) broadened the mandate of the Forest Sur-
sensor data in the inventories. Statistically sound methods, vey to include monitoring of a range of non-timber
the development of which requires resources and time, are resources (U.S. Department of Agriculture 1992). Non-
a priority. Detailed and comprehensive field data remains timber resource data from the inventory, such as habitat
always as the core information in the national forest inven- area estimates, informed several forest management de-
tories. Another trend in Europe and elsewhere is to estab- bates, e.g., informed debates about management of public
lish statistically sound sampling based inventories. For the land (Bolsinger and Waddell 1993).
reasons, see Section Evolution of FIA in the United States. Several developments during the 1990s led to
The tight connections among the inventory teams world- standardization of inventory techniques and analysis
wide maintain the harmonization of the definitions and the methods across the country. Beginning in 1996, all
methods. plots were required to use a four-point design that in-
corporated sampling proportional to plot area instead
Evolution of FIA in the United States of tree size (Labau et al. 1992). Over the subsequent
Anational forest inventory was established by the US Con- decade, all states migrated to a nationally consistent
gress, through the McSweeney-McNary Act of 1928, to as- sample framework, in which one permanent plot was
sess issues related to national and regional timber supply. situated randomly within each 2430-ha (6000-acre)
For several decades, periodic forest assessments were com- cell of a hexagonal tessellation of the country. This
pleted on a state-by-state basis with little effort to create or sample design is considered to be a “spatially balanced
enforce methodological standardization (U.S. Department simple random sample,” ensuring good geographic
of Agriculture 1992). Labau et al. (1992) provide an account distribution of points while retaining a stochastic
of the changing techniques used by this inventory, which element (Reams et al. 2005). The sample can be inten-
was called the country’s “Forest Survey” for most of its sified in areas of interest by further tesselating existing
history and has been called the Forest Inventory and Ana- hexagons into finer spatial units, each with a randomly
lysis program (FIA) since approximately 1990 (earlier in located sample. A national “core” set of variables is
some quarters). measured at each plot, and there is flexibility to add
Prior to World War II, strip sample methods adapted measurements to address regionally important moni-
from European designs, such as that used in Finland’sgen- toring questions. Until approximately 2010, additional
eral survey (Ilvessalo 1927), were common across the coun- measurements, focused primarily on forest health,
try. Timber measurements were taken at fixed distances were collected on 1/16 of all plots to allow broad-scale
along transects that were typically established along regular, assessment of covered variables. Since then, a few of
parallel lines. Following the war, advances in aerial photo- these variables have been moved to “core” status (mea-
grammetry made more efficient stratified designs feasible, sured on all plots), and the rest have been retired.
and strip sampling became less common (Labau et al. Plots are measured on a rotating basis in such a way that
1992). Starting around 1950, plots began to be sampled an approximately equal number of plots per state is mea-
using “variable radius” plot cruising, based upon sampling sured each year. The re-measurement cycle is 5–10 years,
proportional to tree size. These techniques were adapted in depending upon the state, and because 10–20 % of the grid
the US from work in Austria by Bitterlich (Grosenbaugh is visited each year, the system is known as an “annual in-
1958). From approximately 1960 through the mid-1980s, ventory”, as opposed to the earlier practice of periodically
most inventory units used a 10-point cluster design within measuring all plots in the same year. As a result, instead of
a 0.405 ha (1 acre) area. At the same time, programmable a single-date snapshot of conditions that becomes more
Zeng et al. Forest Ecosystems (2015) 2:23 Page 4 of 16
dated until the next re-measurement, FIA estimates reflect Participatory: the involvement of a wide range of
a rolling average picture of conditions over a 5- to 10-year stakeholders is encouraged, including government
period. institutions, the private sector and NGOs.
A principle of the inventory of FIA (and other NFI’s) is Harmonized: the terms and definitions are
the focus on supporting a wide range of academic, indus- consistent among national institutions and refer to
trial, governmental, and environmental clients. Reports on internationally agreed terms and definitions. The
forest status and trends are published at both the state and harmonization allows comparison between countries
national levels every 5 years. The national report (Smith and facilitates reporting to international reporting
et al. 2009) is considered the authoritative description of processes.
theUSforestrysector.Beyondthosereports,thepublicac-
cesses the database itself approximately 100,000 times per According to Saket et al. (2010), the objective of the
year (U.S. Department of Agriculture 2015). While the NFMAis“tocontribute to the sustainable management of
exact coordinates of the plots are not publically available to forests and trees outside forests by providing national
protect the integrity of the sample (Healey et al. 2011), the decision makers and stakeholders with the means of
local neighborhood of each plot is provided, as are all other acquiring accurate, relevant and cost-effective information
elements of the plot measurements. This policy of availabil- on the state, uses, management of the forestry resources
ity is thought to maximize the return on the national in- and land use changes. Such information is particularly
vestment in the inventory. NFIs vary in their willingness to relevant for national and international dialogue on forestry
share data beyond aggregate statistics. Outside of the free related policy issues and socio-economic development”.
data access model pursued by the US and other countries, For more detailed objectives, see Saket et al. (2010). Asses-
many NFIs share plot information only with select collabo- sing trees outside forests may develop into one of the
rators, while others, including China in the past, carefully mostimportant challenges for the immediate future.
restrict data access. By 2013, NFMA had been completed in 10 countries
Today, sample-based inventories are conducted in most and was in progress or anticipated in another 20 countries
European and North American countries, although the (FAO 2013). FAO’s NFMA had employed a standard
tradition in Eastern Europe has been to aggregate data from approach regarding sampling design and data collection
stand-level inventories originally designed for management until 2009. The major sampling unit was a 1×1 km
planning purposes. Stand level data are often assessed in square. Each unit contained a cluster of four plots with a
different years and error estimation of such national size of 250×20 m, placed in perpendicular orientations.
aggregates are not possible. Consequently, many Eastern Small trees were measured on nested subplots. The details
European countries have recently revised their systems in of the design are described by Saket et al. (2010) and FAO
favour of statistical, sample-based NFIs. The main reason is (2013). Due to the high workload for each cluster, the
to conduct and maintain forest inventories within a statis- sampling intensity of the plots had been low. Estimates
tical framework presenting timely information and making could have been computed on the national level only
it possible to estimate uncertainties of forest resource pa- (Tomppo et al. 2014). However, when necessary, the sam-
rameters. The Country reports in Tomppo et al. (2010a) pling intensity was increased based on local information
give an overview of these changes by countries. needs. FAO’s NFMA has also launched specific studies to
analyse and further develop the design based on local in-
FAO NFMA formation needs (Tomppo and Katila 2008b; Tomppo
Since the early 2000s, the Forestry Department of the et al. 2014). One aspect regarding inventories in Tropical
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United countries isaccessibility,–thetimeneededtoreachafield
Nations (FAO) has invested substantial resources in plot. Specific statistical methods are used to address this
developing a programme of support to national forest problem involving, for example, stratification. Consider-
monitoring and assessment, commonly known as ations related especially to forest inventories in the Tro-
NFMA (Saket et al. 2010; FAO 2013; Tomppo et al. pics are discussed by McRoberts et al. (2013).
2014). The NFMA operates mainly in developing
countries, particularly in Tropical forests, and tech- Methods
nical, financial, and institutional co-operation and Brief history of NFI in China
support is often needed. Saket et al. (2010) character- In China a national forest inventory was started relatively
ized the NFMA approach as follows: early. After the People’s Republic of China was established
in 1949, some national institutions for forest survey were
Demand driven: countries request FAO support and set up at first in the northeastern region, and forest sur-
define the assessment scopes as well as information veys were conducted in the Changbai Mountain and
requirements. Xiaoxinganling forest areas. Subsequently, forest surveys
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