The utilisation of other data
Data from other sources are also utilised in addition to those collected during forest resource assessment. The latter can basically be divided into two parts, data from the National Forest Database (NFD) and spatially classified data calculated from sampling plot coordinates.
A part of the data collected for district forest management plans are utilised from the NFD. These serve on the one hand as input data for the field work portion of the statistical forest survey, i.e. they help sample takers do their job. However, input data are frequently overwritten and reconsidered to increase their accuracy. Accuracy improvements are mostly due to the fact that data in the NFD are averages that pertain to forest sub-compartments, while the data recoded during forest resource assessment are valid only for the specific sampling plot. Such data include, for instance, the method and year of utilisation, inclination, etc.
Another part of the data sourced from the NFD tend not to get modified during forest resource assessment and are mostly accepted by sample takers. The explanation for that is that there is hardly any opportunity to improve the accuracy of such data during a forest inventory (such as improving accuracy by identifying the age of each sample tree). Such data, in addition to age, include the components of site type variety (with only hydrology and physical soil type lending themselves to review). Sub-compartment identifier also belongs in this group of data (and it also provides information about whether the sampling plot is subject to a forest management plan).
The third group includes data our forest inventory uses exclusively for the purposes of statistical analysis. These include designation, naturalness and form of ownership, and are always sourced from the NFD and are used as statistical classifiers.
It flows from the above and the methodology of taking forest inventory that none of the data in the NFD can be assigned to individual sampling plots, as the latter are not part of the database. These appear as "non-defined" in the statistics taken of the forest inventory.
Data that divided the whole country into component areas depending on forest cover and forest management planning can be retrieved using the geographic coordinates of sampling plots.
These include:
- Directorate (first instance forest authority)
- name of settlement
- county
- forest macro region
- forest region
- forest micro region
- forest district
- national park