This publication is intended as reference material for practitioners considering inventory of non-wood forest product (NWFP) resources. Through review and analysis of experience it provides an overview of biometric issues in the design of NWFP inventory in the following areas:
· a description of the range of approaches used and developed to date and their biometric adequacy; and
· a suggested method for selecting appropriate biometric methods for resource quantification in different situations and for different products.
After introducing the subject and background Section 1, Section 2 discusses the role of and need for biometrically reliable NWFP assessments. It considers: why resource assessments are needed; what a biometric resource assessment looks like; the biometric qualities of current methods for inventory of NWFPs; and why resource assessments might need to provide biometric data.
Section 3 reviews the quantitative methods currently used in inventory, whilst Section 4 reviews the potential contributions of non-quantitative approaches to biometric assessments. A key issue is that quantitative and qualitative approaches can and do complement each other, if used properly.
Approaches to designing biometrically reliable assessments are discussed in Section 5. It covers: the relevance and application of biometrics in designing an inventory; a decision-support framework as a step-by-step approach to inventory design; planning needs for data analysis and presentation; and some research needs.
This publication will be of most interest to people with some previous knowledge of the basics of inventory. It is based on the outputs of the Forest Research Programme's (FRP) pre-project ZF0077 on the biometrics of current NWFP resource assessment methods.