May 2015: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has released two related publications on forest management for soil and water protection. The first publication, titled ‘Field guide for rapid assessment of forest protective function for soil and water,’ presents a “scientifically sound, cost-effective and easy-to-apply method” for collecting data to promote forest management for soil and water protection.

The guide is intended to help improve capacity for reporting to national inventories and national and global forest resource assessments, in order to support evidence-based decision making for sustainable forest management (SFM) in developing countries, and raise awareness regarding the protective functions of forests. The method presented for collecting reliable data records forest canopy, floor cover and erosion evidence, and was developed through a FAO study that sought to identify the most scientifically sound and least costly method for collecting such data. The GRS DensitometerTM, the instrument in this methodology, is small, light and easy to carry.

This guide is geared towards forest inventory practitioners and researchers interested in evaluating forest protective function for soil and water. The guide complements the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015, which outlines an approach for using evidence of forest resource change in national forest programmes to support SFM.

The second publication, titled ‘Testing field methods for assessing the forest protective function for soil and water,’ is a thematic study to assess the scientific accuracy and cost-efficiency of various methodologies to collect data on soil and water protection provided by forests. The paper discusses tests and data analysis undertaken in Nepal, Mexico and Viet Nam.

The paper elaborates on four methods: visual forest floor cover assessment; forest canopy and floor cover assessment; line-point transect forest cover and assessment; and forest floor cover biomass assessment. It ranks and compares the various methods in terms of reliability and data collection costs, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each, and recommends the line-point transect forest cover and erosion assessment. [FAO Publications Webpage] [Publication: Field guide for rapid assessment of forest protective function for soil and water] [Publication: Testing field methods for assessing the forest protective function for soil and water]