Reconstruction of Forest Areas Using Geostatistics as an Aid in the Evaluation of Burned Areas1

There are frequently no bases for economically evaluating a forest, following fire. An evaluation needs to consider: a) The original commercial value of the forest (timber, tourism, germ plasma etc.) b) The cost of restoring the forest to its original condition; and c) The opportunity cost involved in restoration. This is essentially feasible, provided that the original state of the forest area prior to the fire is known. However, one of the most frequent problems in the management of forest resources is the difficulty in defining the spatial distribution of the forest characteristics. In this study the use of geo-statistical techniques are described and the manner in which they are used to define the continuous surfaces of some characteristics of a forest: the base areas; number of species; average diameter; the number of trees per hectare, as a basis for the reconstruction of a forest area prior to a fire. The data was taken from a forest in the state of Chihuahua, México (1998). 554 points were chosen as random samples, within a 1400 hectare area. The definition of continuous surfaces was made on the basis of ordinary kriging (OK), from which it was possible to model acceptably the spatial distribution of the characteristics mentioned. In this way the original form of any area can be estimated within the study zone. If there is no previous inventory available, it is suggested that this methodology be used by taking information from the sample points around the burned area