Scottish forest inventory information derived from satellite imagery and field data

Up-to-date information of forest resources is required at a variety of scales in order to support forest management practices ranging from strategic to operational levels. The rate of change in Scottish forests is significant and may occur over short periods due to active silvicultural management and the impact of natural disturbances (e.g. windthrow). Field-based sample inventories collect information on the location, condition and extent of current forest resources. However, Bottai et al. (2002) note that in many cases the sampling intensities for operational inventories are too coarse and cannot provide accurate representations of the forest resources.