MEASURING AND ASSESSING MANAGEMENT OF FORESTED LANDSCAPES

Forest management assessment is poorly understood and rarely undertake n in practice. In current practice, forest responses to management int erventions are not typically monitored and evaluated. Consequently, an y sense of objective achievement is lacking. Assessment of forest resp onse is necessary, however, to ensure that forest management efficient ly and effectively moves a forest toward a desired objective, by detec ting deviation and adjusting management strategy accordingly. This pap er proposes a framework for forest management assessment centred on th e landscape, or ecosystem, management model. The framework identifies spatial forest structure, i.e. the array, amounts and geographical arr angement of forest conditions, as a basis for setting forest objective s, establishing spatial management strategies, and periodically measur ing and assessing forest responses. Periodic measurement of spatial fo rest structure will be a significant challenge in implementing the ass essment framework proposed. The potential of digital satellite imagery and GIS technologies is examined, using a Landsat TM image and the Ar c/Info(TM) and Easi/Pace(TM) software systems, and found wanting.