Courtesy : Bachelor of Science Forestry (Botany, Zoology, forestry Smart Boy
The Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) reports on the status and trends of the world’s forest resources. It is led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). # ISO certification in India
FRA reports the extent of the world’s forest area as well as other variables, including forest growing stock, biomass and carbon, forest designation and management, forest ownership and management rights, forest disturbances, forest policy and legislation, employment education and non-wood forest products (NWFP).# ISO certification in India
Background
FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessments provide a comprehensive view of the world’s forests and the ways in which they are changing. FRA data and analyses support the development of sound policies, practices and investments affecting forests and forestry around the world.# ISO certification in India
History
FAO’s mandate to assess the world’s forest resources stems from its constitution, “The Organization shall collect, analyze, interpret and disseminate information relating to nutrition, food and agriculture. In this Constitution, the term ‘agriculture’ and its derivatives include fisheries, marine products, forestry and primary forestry products” (Article I, Functions of the Organization, paragraph 1).# ISO certification in India
The first FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment was published in 1948 and focused mostly on assessing the availability of timber. Since then, FAO has been monitoring the world’s forests at five- to ten-year intervals, and has produced various regional and global surveys.
Data collection process
The assessment is based on two primary sources of data: country reports prepared by national correspondents and remote sensing that are compiled in cooperation with a network of national experts and international partners such as the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC).
Country reporting
FRA is a country-driven process where official national data are reported to FAO by country officers known as national correspondents. National correspondents are officially nominated by their countries to compile and report information and data on their national forest resources. FAO trains the national correspondents on how to compile country reports using commonly agreed-upon terms and definitions and a standardized reporting methodology.# ISO certification in India
For the FRA 2020, FAO developed the FRA Platform, an online reporting platform where national correspondents add statistical data and metadata on their country’s forests and their management and use. The FRA Platform acts as both a reporting platform and a data storage site. It also provides countries that do not have forestry inventory and monitoring systems a tool to consistently interpolate or extrapolate forestry figures.
Remote sensing
Since 1990, FRA has used remote sensing to complement the information collected through the country reporting process with global and regional analyses of the world’s forest resources. With better access to a growing archive of satellite imagery and the availability of new tools to facilitate image processing and interpretation, remote sensing has become an important tool for the assessment of the status and changes in tree cover and land use. FRA uses remote sensing surveys to build country capacities to use remote sensing for forest monitoring as well as to generate independent, robust and consistent estimates of forest area and its changes over time at global, regional and biome levels.# ISO certification in India