APPLICATION OF LARGE-SCALE PHOTOGRAPHY TO A FOREST INVENTORY

For many years the Forest Management Institute has been developing a large-scale photography system for forest inventory. The role of this system is to replace most, but not all, of the ground work required to make sample plot estimates of species composition, measurements of tree variables such as height, diameter and volume and stand estimates such as stocking, basal area, volume and the distribution of trees by diameter and volume classes.The development of the method, until recently, concentrated mainly on overcoming technical problems limiting the accuracy of the tree measurements and the reliability of the species identification. Significant progress on such problems had led to a shift in emphasis to cost-efficiency considerations and the practical problems of implementing the method. This paper outlines the problems encountered in recent operational trials of the method, provides some results on production costs and indicates plans to overcome some of the remaining problems.