Forest cover assessment in the Argentinean regions of monte and espinal

Abstract

A priority activity for FAO in forestry is the Regional and Global Forest Resources Assessment, FRA. Available data on forest cover, types of forests and other data on the state of forests are collected on country basis, or preferably on sub national basis, to be components of Regional and Global Analysis of the world forests. For the last Regional and Global FRA the source for the Argentinean forest statistics, IFONA 1987, originated from 1986 and presented a native forest cover of 34.530.000 h a and from this source FRA estimated a native forests coverage of 33.394.500 ha in 1995. The forest statistics in IFONA 1987 were based on various partial forest inventories from different years using different terms and definitions. These inventory results were compiled without any distinction regarding terms and definitions used in the different inventories, meaning that the source for this reason and others is of low precision and therefore not reliable to be used directly in the FRA 2000. It was decided that for the coming FRA (2000) a new effort should be made to achieve more updated data to improve the quality of the new regional and global FRA analysis.