Back to Search
Start Over
Are we ready for a National Forest Information System? State of the art of forest maps and airborne laser scanning data availability in Italy
- Source :
- iForest-Biogeosciences and Forestry, Vol 14, Iss 1, Pp 144-154 (2021)
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology (SISEF), 2021.
-
Abstract
- Forest planning, forest management, and forest policy require updated, reliable, and harmonized spatial datasets. In Italy a national geographic Forest Information System (FIS) designed to store and facilitate the access and analysis of spatial datasets is still missing. Among the different information layers which are useful to start populating a FIS, two are essential for their multiple use in the assessment of forest resources: (i) forest mapping, and (ii) data from Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS). Both layers are not available wall-to-wall for Italy, though different local sources of information potentially useful for their implementation already exist. The objectives of this work were to: (i) review forest maps and ALS data availability in Italy; (ii) develop for the first time a high resolution forest mask of Italy which was validated against the official statistics of the Italian National Forest Inventory; (iii) develop the first mosaic of all the main ALS data available in Italy producing a consistent Canopy Height Model (CHM). An on-line geographic FIS with free access to both layers from (ii) and (iii) was developed for demonstration purposes. The total area of forest and other wooded lands computed from the forest mask was 102.608.82 km2 (34% of the Italian territory), i.e., 1.9% less than the NFI benchmark estimate. This map is currently the best wall-to-wall forest mask available for Italy. We showed that only the 63% of the Italian territory (the 60% of the forest area) is covered by ALS data. These results highlight the urgent need for a national strategy to complete the availability of forest data in Italy.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Official statistics
LiDAR
Forest management
Mosaic (geodemography)
Forest Mask
01 natural sciences
Forest Inventory
Multiple use
Benchmark (surveying)
Information system
Airborne Laser Scanning
lcsh:Forestry
Nature and Landscape Conservation
Forest inventory
Ecology
Forestry
04 agricultural and veterinary sciences
Lidar
Geography
Forest Monitoring
National Datasets
040103 agronomy & agriculture
0401 agriculture, forestry, and fisheries
lcsh:SD1-669.5
Cartography
010606 plant biology & botany
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 19717458
- Volume :
- 14
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....3744d84af3b197955854a4326d2a549b