Editorial: Monitoring and responding to global change to promote resilient and productive forests through innovative forest inventory

Abstract

National Forest Inventories (NFIs) provide critical information about the distribution and composition of forest resources and help assess sustainable forest management. Data on important topics such as biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and forest products inform planning, policy, and national and international reporting. The USDA Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (FIA) is the primary source of strategic-level information about the status of and trends in forests in the United States. The program is built on a statistically robust sampling network of permanent forest inventory and monitoring plots that serve as the basis for a diverse array of scientific studies (Tinkham et al., 2018; Lister et al., 2020). The papers presented here highlight research presented at the 2022 FIA Science Stakeholder Meeting, the 15th such meeting held since 1999, e.g., Morin and Liknes (2012), Stanton and Christensen (2015), Healey and Berrett (2017), and Brandeis (2020). The sampling of papers in this Research Topic represents the broad topical, geographic, and applied scope of the ongoing research associated with the national FIA Program, highlighting the impact of innovative methods and uses of forest inventory data in forest research and management across the U.S. and globally.

Citation

​Morin, Randall S.; Healey, Sean P.; Prisley, Steve; Randolph, KaDonna C.; Westfall, James A.; Gray, Andrew N. 2023. Editorial: Monitoring and responding to global change to promote resilient and productive forests through innovative forest inventory. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. 6: 1168453. 3 p. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1168453.