Editorial for the Special Issue "Remote Sensing-assisted forest inventory"

Abstract

Global forest ecosystems provide multiple merchantable and non-merchantable ecosystem services, and are highly required to be monitored and protected. One major ecosystem service is theminimization and mitigation of the negative effects of climate change. Depending on various spatial scales, different planning actions are required for forest management, which all entail one prerequisite in common: up-to-date quantitative information provided by regular forest monitoring and inventory. Descriptive and spatially explicit statistics on forest inventory variables over tree, sample plot and finally landscape levels are essential requirements for every sound planning and management strategy. With almost no exception, examples of such information can be summarized into three categories of composition (arrangement and presence/absence of species), function (processes and their dynamics) and structure (spatiotemporal distribution and allometric attributes of tree). Whereas the conventional field-based approaches based on permanent sample plots are constrained by their required time, costs and logistics, remote sensing data methods can complement and advance inventories for both science and practice, due to the potentials for accurate, repeatable and objective forest inventory and analysis....