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DocumentGlobal Forest Resources Assessment - FRA 2020 - Terms and Definitions
Working Paper No. 188
2018FAO has been coordinating global forest resources assessments every five to ten years since 1946. The assessments have to a great extent contributed to the improvement of concepts, definitions and methods related to forest resources assessments. Strong efforts have been made to harmonize and streamline reporting with other international forest-related processes e.g. within the framework of the Collaborative Partnership on Forest (CPF), as well as with the partner organizations of the Collaborative Forest Resources Questionnaire (CFRQ) and the scientific community, all in order to harmonize and improve forest related definitions and reduce reporting burden on countries. The core definitions build on earlier global assessments to ensure comparability over time. Whenever new definitions are introduced or old definitions modified this is done taking into consideration recommendations from experts in various fora. -
ArticleImplications of forest definition for quantifying disturbance regime characteristics in Mediterranean forests
XV World Forestry Congress, 2-6 May 2022
2022Also available in:
No results found.In the context of climate change and the increasing incidence of extreme events, global-scale assessments of forest disturbance regimes are needed to monitor changes, inform decision-making and adjust management and planning. But estimations of disturbance regime parameters can be strongly influenced by the criteria used for defining what constitutes a forest. Forests in Mediterranean regions are subject to increasingly higher pressure from climate change and anthropogenic factors. These pressures take the form of slow and diffuse degradation processes, such as drought-induced mortality and competition with shrubs, but also sudden stand- replacing disturbances, such as fire. Many Mediterranean forests, composed of widely spaced trees, are at the lower limit of the 10% canopy cover threshold set by the FAO for defining forests, while others are highly fragmented and mixed with a bushy matrix, qualifying them as other wooded lands. We thus expect assessments of forest disturbance regimes in the Mediterranean region to be particularly sensitive to the thresholds chosen. We assess the uncertainty linked to using different forest definitions for calculating disturbance rotation periods for the 40 ecoregions composing the Mediterranean biome. Using Google Earth Engine and remotely sensed data between 2000-2015, we apply different criteria for calculating the extent of forests and the areas disturbed within them, accounting for forest type, minimum size, canopy density and land use change. We identify the ecoregions with the disturbance rotation periods that are the most sensitive to these different definitions and compare the overall uncertainty with other major forest biomes. We conclude by discussing the importance of identifying harmonized definitions that can best support the sustainable management of Mediterranean forests, as well as opportunities for making consistent and accurate global baselines that can help improve projections of climate change impacts. Keywords: Forests, Disturbances, Remote Sensing, Planning, Climate Change ID: 3622233 -
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