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By Francis A. Roesch and Gregorv A. Reams Y I The USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) Forest Inventory and Analysis Unit (FIA) has initiated an annualized forest inventory sampling des@, the Southern Annual Forest Inventory System (SAFIS). SAFIS was introduced to improve estimation of both the current resource inventory and changes in the resource. Under the previous periodic inventory system, individual states were inventoried over a twoto threeyear period, about every 10 years. Many factors, including rapid land use changes and the intense forest dynamics in the southern United States, contributed to diminished confidente in inventory estimates that were more than a few years old. It was decided that an annualized inventory system, in which data is collected statewide every year, would provide more timely and useful estimates. We will discuss some of the analytical proposals for data from this system. Before the SAFIS effort, the North Central Research Station (NCRS) had