DESIGNING MULTIPURPOSE RESOURCE INVENTORIES

An International Short Course

Turrialba, Costa Rica

21-25 February 2000

Sponsored by CATIE and IUFRO 4.02

Objective - to provide participants enough experience and background material so they can go back home and design an MRI and/or conduct a national/regional training session in their own country.

This should be a "hands on" training session whereby participants come with information from their own country and have the opportunity to work on a design concept under the supervision of the instructors.Lectures should be a minimum. Hands - on work should be a maximum.


 

Justification -Implementation of forest resource planning and strategies in most of the world is very poor and frequently lacking. Forest policies are, in many cases, inappropiate and hardly applicable. Forest management success is dependent on how other resources (agriculture, wildlife, etc.) are managed. As a result, natural resource degradation continues at increasing rate, fostered by its most important incentive, population growth in rural areas. This in turn, enhances poverty in human populations inhabiting natural ecosystems and rural lands. This situation is fully evident south of the U.S. border, over the rest of the American continent.

One of the main constraints that developing countries face for reversing the present forest resource destruction trend, is lack of reliable information. Most of the third world ignores the magnitude of its natural resources and hence ignores as well, the potential contribution of their forests and other natural ecosystems to alleviate poverty of rural communities and improve national welfare in general.

To overcome the basic problem cited above, training on practical procedures for inventorying natural resources is urgently needed in Latin American and in developing countries. The United States and IUFRO expertise on the subject will be successfully combined to implement a course on “Multi Resource Inventory” channalized to professionals directly involved with natural resource management and decision making in developing world.CATIE, an international center strategically located in Costa Rica, Central America, provides an interesting and valuable site for conducting this short course.


 

MONDAY21 FEB.

AM

Section I - Opening (21 Feb.) - 1 hour

¨Welcome 

¨Objectives

¨Introductions and expectations

Session II - Setting the stage -Lund

¨Lecture: Multipurpose Resource Inventories - what are they

¨Lecture:Creating an effective infrastructure 

¨Exercise: Creating an effective infrastructure 

¨Lecture: Creating a Vision and establishing objectives 

¨Exercise: Information Needs Assessment.

PM

¨Reports:INA exercise

¨Lecture: Assembling and evaluating existing info.

¨Exercise: Evaluation of existing info.


 

TUESDAY 22 FEB 

AM

Session II - Setting the stage continued -Lund

¨Reports: Existing Info.

¨Lecture: Establishing the Inventory needs and objective

¨Developing the MRI plan

¨Establishing and maintaining the information system

¨Exercise: Developing MRI plan 

¨Report: MRI Plan

PM 

Section III - Developing the inventory - Czaplewski and Schreuder

¨Lecture: Collecting data (including use of remote sensing): logistics of time and space 

¨Sampling frames

¨Incorporation of remotely sensed data with field sampling

¨Unequal probability sampling for rare or featured characteristics

¨Stratification to improve efficiency or precision

¨Sampling in mixed forest and agricultural landscapes

¨Design of primary and secondary sampling units

¨Sub-sampling with equal or unequal probability within primary sampling units

¨Exercise: Application of statistical principles to participants' case studies:
 

WEDNESDAY23 FEB (or THURSDAY) -ALL DAY - 

Field trip to discuss inventory strategies and test plot designs. Kleinn, Czaplewski, Schreuder (Lund and Rudis for planning and non-timber resources) 
 

THURSDAY 24 FEB

AM

Section III - Developing the inventory continued : Czaplewski and Schreuder

¨Reports: Feedback on field trip - lessons learned or not learned

PM 

Section IV - Analysis, documentation - Rudis 

¨Lecture: Providing for quality assurance: qualitative and quantitative measures

¨Direct measures of non-timber resource stocks - Wildlife Habitat, Recreation Resource Inventory Criteria 

¨Indirect measures of processes (energy flows) (Resource Value Indicators: Human and Landscape Scale Dimensions, and Disturbance and Human Impact Indicators)

¨Exercise: Development of Criteria and Indicators, with QA


 

FRIDAY 25 FEB 

AM 

Section IV - Analysis, documentation continued - Rudis

¨Report: QA exercise 

¨Lecture: Discussion of likely analysis and needed documentation 

¨Analysis: barriers (social, political, disciplinary jargon, linear thinking) opportunities (GIS, team approaches, systems thinking) generic habitat evaluation indicators ecological process-driven resource assessments

¨Sharing: avoiding jargon, identifying stakeholders, potential audiences incorporation of secondary data and stakeholder perspectives to achieve objectives scale (temporal, spatial)

¨Communicating:Internet outlets popular and peer-reviewed outlets graphics, maps, data layers for GIS applications

¨Evaluating:statistical reliability with multi-discipline perspectives,

¨Documenting:multi-discipline data dissemination (Web) for the short term updating and revising. analytical protocol archives for the long term maintaining feedback systems: e.g., tracking data use and users

¨Exercise: Practice in using available data, documentation, and tools to address resource issues of interest.

PM

Session V - Closeout - Miguel Caballero-Deloya

¨Critique

¨Wrapup

Language:The course will be taught in English

Contact:

Dr. Miguel Caballero Deloya

Head. Area of Environmental Economics and Sociology.

Research Program

CATIE 7170. Turrialba

Costa Rica.

TELFAX: 556 8514

Tel: 556 6431 Ext. 2522.

Electronic mail: caballer@catie.ac.cr