Forests represent a remnant wilderness of high recreational value in the densely populated industrial societies, a threatened natural resource in some regions of the world and a renewable reservoir of essential raw materials for the wood processing industry. In June 1992 the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro initiated a world-wide process of negotiation with the aim of ensuring sustainable management, conservation and development of forest resources. Although there seems to be unanimous support for sustainable development from all quarters, there is no generally accepted set of indicators which allows comparisons to be made between a given situation and a desirable one. In a recent summary paper prepared by the FAO Forestry and Planning Division, Ljungman et al. (1999) find that forest resources continue to diminish, while being called upon to produce a greater range of goods and services and that calls for sustainable forest management will simply go unheeded if the legal, policy and administrative environment do not effectively control undesirable practices. Does the concept of sustainable forest management represent not much more than a magic formula for achieving consensus, a vague idea which makes it difficult to match action to rhetoric? The concept of sustainable forest management is likely to remain an imprecise one, but we can contribute to avoiding management practices that are clearly unsustainable.

Inhalt

1. New approaches for multi resource forest inventories.- Remote Sensing Technologies.- 2. Combining remote sensing and field data for deriving unbiased estimates of forest parameters over large regions.- 3. Using remote sensing and a spatial plant productivity model to assess biomass change.- 4. Estimating number of Pteridophyte and Melastomataceae species from satellite images in western Amazonian rain forests.- 5. Computation of a dynamic forest fire risk index by the use of a long-term NOAA-AVHRR NDVI data set.- 6. Testing Ikonos and Landsat 7 ETM+ potential for stand-level forest type mapping by soft supervised approaches.- 7. Use of high resolution satellite images in the forest inventory and mapping of Piemonte region (Italy).- 8. Updating forest inventory data by remote sensing or growth models to characterise maritime pine stands at the management unit level.- 9. Stratification of a forest area for multi source forest inventory by means of aerial photographs and image segmentation.- 10. Estimating forest canopy structure using helicopter-borne LIDAR measurement.- Sampling Techniques.- 11. Presence/absence sampling as a substitute for cover assessment in vegetation monitoring.- 12. A two-phase sampling strategy for forest inventories.- 13. Assessment of non-wood-goods and services by cluster sampling.- Landscape Pattern and Habitat Suitability.- 14. Describing landscape pattern by sampling methods.- 15. Habitat characterization and mapping for umbrella species An integrated approach using satellite and field data.- 16. A multi temporal analysis of habitat suitability.- 17. Assessing forest landscape structure using geographic windows.- 18. Comparison of landscape indices under particular consideration of the geometric and geographic moving window concept.-19. Comparative analysis of tourism influence on landscape structure in Mallorca using remote sensing and socioeconomic data since the 50s.- Information on European Forest Resources.- 20. Key-attributes for the monitoring of non-timber forest resources in Europe.- 21. Mapping forest in Europe by combining earth observation data and forest statistics.- 22. European Forest Information System EFIS. A step towards better access to forest information.- Studies from Selected Countries and Regions.- 23. Mapping and monitoring of tree resources outside the forest in Central America.- 24. Monitoring status and condition of Australian Mediterranean-type forest ecosystems.- 25. Analysis of the cork forest of Ben Slimane (Morocco) using multi temporal images.- 26. Derivation of LAI estimates from NDVI and conventional data for the simulation of forest water fluxes.- 27. Predictive vegetation mapping in the Mediterranean context: considerations and methodological issues.- 28. Ideas and options for a national forest inventory in Turkey.- 29. Multilevel monitoring systems for cork oak (Quercus suber L.) stands in Portugal.- 30. Assessing and monitoring the status of biodiversity-related aspects in Flemish forests by use of the Flemish forest inventory data.- Conclusion.- List of Reviewers.- Editors Profiles.