| Abstract
| - Russia's forests play a significant role at the global level in producing both timber and environmental benefits, i.e. in roundwood production, carbon sequestration and biodiversity protection. Information on these forest resources is based on ocular compartment-level forest inventory data. The basic problem with this inventory approach is that its reliability cannot be assessed, since the method is not based on statistical sampling. The inventory data for the Novgorod region were therefore checked by remeasuring a sample of the original compartments in order to determine their accuracy. The results showed that the original total stand volumes based on the Russian forest inventory were on average underestimated by 13.4 per cent, the corresponding root mean-square error for the whole material being 32.4 per cent. This bias varied in the range 8-20 per cent between individual different forest management units, leskhozy, and also varied according to the dominant tree species, being 12 per cent in pine-dominated compartments, 14 per cent in birch-dominated compartments, 21 per cent in aspen-dominated compartments and having a slight negative bias of 4 per cent in spruce-dominated compartments. Finally, consideration of timber quality in the volume calculations showed notable changes from sawnwood timber to pulpwood.
|
