Permanent Inventory Program for Natural Forest Ecosystem Resources, Chile

The natural resources related to the forest ecosystems in Chile can be considered as the physical expression of site condition. Chilean people require and demand from these resources some good and commodities in order to fulfill the people need for welfare. However, utilization of the natural forest ecosystems resources must be under the sustainability bases and considerations, and as such, the whole society should deeply understand the natural dynamics related to forest as well as their capabilities and limiting variables. In this respect, information regarding the actual and future states of forest and its related ecosystem component like vegetation, soil, water and wildlife should be suitably generated under a Permanent base. Main issues as growing stock, growing rates, mortality, areas, biodiversity, wildlife, environmental component status, landscape, Carbon sink and future scenarios analysis given some particular conditions, are common topics regarding the forest ecosystem natural resources. In order to face such a huge amount of questions an efficient tool should be devised, as such, this tool should be characterized by,

• being strong

• being flexible under technological changes

• being able to provide suitable data for different disciplines

• being periodic in time

• being efficient and cost effective

• enabling several kind of analysis

Taking into account the above characteristics, the Permanent Inventory Program for the natural forest ecosystem resources in Chile (INFOR), is promoting the periodic and permanent collection of field data producing information regarding the status of natural forest ecosystems in Chile. Recently, a Chilean funding organization, FDI (Fondo de Innovación y Desarrollo) granted to INFOR the financial support for the project "FM-14: Caracterización productiva de los recursos forestales nativos de las regiones IX y X" ("A productive characterization of the natural forest resources on the regions IX and X") which define productive in a non traditional way, i.e. production represents the whole expression of the ecosystem capabilities given by their local site conditions. Its general objective is "to create the base data and information related to the natural forest ecosystem in the area included in the IX and X regions". This project is the very first stage for the definitive implementation of a Permanent Inventory related to natural resources in Chile, and it is going to be initiated on two of the most important Forest Regions of our country, i.e., the region IX de la Araucanía and the region X de los Lagos. These regions were selected among others, given its resources relative importance and potential at a national level, both regions account a total area of 4.5 millions hectares of natural forest (Catastro 1997 CONAF-CONAMA), which represent almost the 34% of the total land covered by natural forest in Chile. Both regions are well covered with a suitable infrastructure. All these characteristics made these two regions the natural and logical initial step to start with a Forest Inventory under Permanent bases.