FRA 2000 on definitions of forest and forest change

FRA 2000 on definitions of forest and forest change

Descripción

FAO has developed and implemented global terms and definitions of various forest parameters since its first worldwide assessment in 1947. Information presented in FRA Working Paper 1 (FAO 1998) for the current global assessment, FRA 2000, reports on this subject. This paper takes into consideration over 50 years of cumulative experience in FAO working in the field of global forest resources assessments. The terms and definitions applied in FRA 2000 are artificial constructs which help us to unde rstand and describe the world’s forest vegetation, and how it is changing through time. By necessity, the global definitions are compromises, and their application is subject to interpretation. The sheer magnitude and variability of the forest resources information produced by countries, make this so. Moreover, the wide range of forest formations, ecological conditions and forest cover types, which exist on a global scale, make global definitions necessarily broad. One of the major analytical ta sks in a global assessment is to group and classify detailed information from national classifications according to global definitions. For this exercise, there are many cases where assumptions or approximations must be made. For example, in FRA 2000, more than 650 definitions of forest were assembled from 132 developing countries (from 110 independent surveys). Reducing this information into a highly compressed and discrete set of global classes was a major challenge. At the same time, the orig inal classifications are kept in the Forestry Information System (FORIS) making it possible to make alternative interpretations of national data, should this be needed.