IUFRO Conference

COLLECTING and ANALYZING INFORMATION for SUSTAINABLE FOREST MANAGEMENT and BIODIVERSITY MONITORING with special reference to MEDITERRANEAN ECOSYSTEMS

Palermo, Sicily (Italy) 4-7 December 2001

Organizers:

IUFRO 4.02.05 - Remote Sensing and World Forest Monitoring IUFRO 4.02.06 - Resource Data in the Boreal and Temperate Regions	Accademia Italiana di Scienze Forestali	Space Application Institute Joint Research Center European Commission	Università degli Studi di Palermo Dipartimento di Colture Arboree

Co-organizers:

European Forest Institute	Associazione Italiana di Telerilevamento	Azienda Foreste Demaniali della Regione Siciliana	Federazione delle Associazioni Scientifiche per le Informazioni Territoriali e Ambientali	geoLAB - Laboratory of Geomatics Università degli Studi di Firenze

Aims

Improvement of forest inventory/monitoring is needed to cope with the required assessment and understanding of ecosystem attributes on a global environmental and georeferenced scale. Properly targeted application improvements however must be primarily focused on technical advancements in a broad sense. Changes in land cover and in other ecosystem features have a direct impact on the social expectations concerning forests, especially for its links with nature conservation, global climatic changes and recreation activities. On one hand, the increasing concern of people, researchers and public administration for the values of such environments has enhanced the need for reliable and standardised information on forest attributes in the form of statistics, georeferenced data-bases, thematic cartography, etc. On the other hand, inventories are often not fully exploited for actual forest planning and control. This is distinctively true for the issues related to sustainable forest management. Within such a framework, fostering sound forest inventory and monitoring initiatives and extension encourages the technical and organisational development of the whole forestry sector. An increasing impact on forest inventory and monitoring is also expected by the international directives posing the problem of assessing habitat and ecosystem changes with respect to biodiversity conservation and forest externalities.

The Conference was conceived to give participants hands-on workshop exchanges and experiences about inventory/monitoring problems and potential. Special (but not exclusive) reference will be made to Mediterranean forest and other wooded ecosystems, and techniques such as remote sensing and spatial analysis in GIS environment. In Mediterranean countries, reliable and internationally comparable information on forest health and protection, wildfires and biodiversity is largely missing or unsatisfactory. This state is in contrast with the wood-production oriented information characteristically provided by current forest inventory and monitoring procedures.

In light of all the highlighted issues, the major objectives of this Conference were:

• review the state-of-the-art of forest inventory data and methodology, with special reference to Mediterranean ecosystems, remote sensing and spatial analysis;
• review inventory/monitoring techniques relevant to high forest landscape heterogeneity and forthcoming technologies;
• review mensuration and information technology advances for distinctive issues such as monitoring wildfires, biomass estimation in coppices and dwarf maquis stands, grazing pressure on forests;
• discuss the possible connecting role of landscape ecology and the inventory implementation of habitat classification approaches in the view of forest biodiversity assessment;
• facilitate cooperation between Mediterranean countries, enhancing externalities perspective development as the greater contribution to natural and seminatural areas management in such environments;
• produce summary of discussions and conclusions will be included in the Conference proceedings.

Scientific committee

Michael KÖHL (chairman), Giuseppe BARBERA, Carlo BLASI, Cris BRACK, Orazio CIANCIO, Piermaria CORONA, Mohammed ELLATIFI, Sten FOLVING, Pamela KENNEDY, Christoph KLEINN, Marco MARCHETTI, Gidi NE'EMAN, Risto PAIVINEN, Francesco M. RAIMONDO, Roberto SCOTTI, Goran STAHL, Giovanni TABACCHI, Margarita TOMÈ, Boris ZEIDE

Conference secretariat

Dr. Giuseppe Garfì and Dr. Tommaso La Mantia, Dipartimento di Colture Arboree, Università degli Studi di Palermo
Viale delle Scienze 11 - 90128 Palermo (Italy)
Tel. +39-091-423398/484482
Fax +39-091-6521098
e-mail: agrofor@unipa.it

Post-conference point of contact

Dr. Gherardo Chirici
geoLAB - Laboratory of Geomatics
University of Florence, Italy
E-mail: info@geolab.unifi.it