Despite serious shortages, caused by the ongoing war, State Forest Management Planning Agency (SFMPA ) and its Centre for National Forest Inventory (CNFI) organized end July a one week workshop on monitoring and fieldwork for NIF implementation. National Technical Advisor of the German project “Technical Support for Forest Policy Development and Implementation of National Forest Inventory”, Vitaliy Storozhuk, contributed to the workshop with his knowledge on international experiences in national forest inventories.
The workshop had the objective to survey forest inventory plots, established and analyzed by two field inventory teams, acting currently in Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. Control re-measurements (‘cool’ checks), control observations and supervisory checks (‘hot’ checks) were carried out by Olexandr Shevchuk, Head of CNFI, and Andrii Shamrai, Deputy Head of CNFI, in accordance with the “Regulations on Control and Supervision of NFI Fieldwork”. Viktor Melnychenko, General Director of SFMPA, also took part and drew attention on the importance of NFI reports quality, which directly depends on the quality of data collection at the inventory areas (https://www.facebook.com/lisproekt/). During the workshop ergonomic improvements during measurements with the Vertex 5 device, particularly in mountain conditions have been addressed.
Data collection and control re-measurement for NFI in Ukraine is carried out by using the SmallForest software application for Android-based mobile systems, adapted for the purposes of the NFI. SmallForest allows automized rationality checks during data gathering. Authorized NIF specialist are cross checking data, provide feedback to the field teams and upload data to the central database only after approval.
Vitaly Storozhuk, said: “In light of international experiences control re-measurements as well as observations and supervisory checks are of outmost importance for guaranty of data quality in national forest inventories. SFI project will invite international experts to review the current quality assurance arrangements and convince themselves about high quality standards applied for NFI in Ukraine.”
