China reaches world level in surveying and monitoring forest resources

In recent years we've come to adopt a big batch of modern and high technologies in forestry survey and planning, said Lei Jiafu, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration on 25 November. This has made China to place itself at an advanced level of the world in the fields of forest resources survey, major projects planning, and the monitoring of wild fauna and flora, desertification and wetlands and forest fires.

The planning and designing for the survey is the fundamental work for the construction of forestry and ecology and management. For around half a century, the contingent for the forest resources survey has developed from a unitary survey of forest area and timber resources to the multifarious aspects. That includes the monitoring of forestry resources, desertification, wetland, and fauna and flora in wilderness. And it goes still further to forestation, forest park, nature reserve, sapling cultivation and horticulture, greening parks and gardens, forest protection and management, and the construction of forestry information system and the planning and designing, consultation and appraisal for the construction of computer network of the forestry information system, forestry standard compilation, project supervision as well as the appraisal of forest resources and assets.

This year witnessed 18 times of sandstorms in China, affecting some 47 million hectares of arable land in 18 provinces and regions. The monitoring data, which concern directly with the life and production of the people come from the survey and planning institution of the State Forestry Administration As introduced by Li Zhongping, deputy director of the survey and planning institution, the institution is a contingent, the earliest one among those set up after the founding of the People's Republic of China for the survey and planning of the forestry in China. It has made great contribution to the forest construction and development of the Greater and Smaller Xing'an Mountain Ranges and the primitive forests in southwest China and Xinjiang as well.

In the historical transitional period from mainly for timber production to the ecological construction in China the forest survey and planning work has by and large established a nationwide monitoring system for forest ecological environment on a solid and reliable hi-tech platform. In recent years, the monitoring and supervision of forest fires, of desertification, and the survey and monitoring of wetlands as well as the construction of forestry informationization has become a new task for the forestry surveyors. Using the advanced means and measures satellite remote-sensing, computer and geographic information system, the surveyors can monitor and supervise at any moment the mobile ecological changes, such as forest fires, soil-aridness and forest pests and so on, reducing an economic loss of several hundred million yuan every year.

By People's Daily Online