The Need for Harmonized Estimates of Forest Biodiversity Indicators

Forest biodiversity is crucial to the ecological, economic, and social well-being of earth's civilisations. Unfortunately, however, forest biodiversity is threatened to a serious degree in nearly all countries. Therefore, many countries have agreed to be parties to international agreements focused on maintaining, restoring, and monitoring biodiversity; further, these countries have agreed to report to international bodies on the status and trends in forest biodiversity. NFIs are the primary source of large-scale information available for this purpose, but the large variety of definitions, protocols, sampling designs, and plot configurations used by NFIs makes comparable international reporting extremely difficult. COST Action E43 was initiated to address this problem by developing harmonization techniques that facilitate common reporting. Harmonization typically consists of two components: development of common international reference definitions and development of bridging techniques that facilitate estimation according to reference definitions using data collected according to national definitions. Working Group 3 of COST Action E43 has focused its harmonization efforts on issues related to biodiversity. The chapters and sections that follow document these efforts in detail.