of Remote Sensing and Forest Inventory at the University of

forest assessments, leading to cost savings and/or improving accuracy and precision- but revolutionary changes are not expected. National forest inventories (NFIs) provide information relevant for national-level decision making, policy formulation and monitoring for forestry and related sectors, as well as for forestry planning in smaller geographical or political units at the subnational level. Since the results are an input to global forest assessments, there is also regional and global interest in high-quality national forest information. This article examines technological and methodological developments that can facilitate implementation of NFIs and provide improved information, thus helping to improve management and policy formulation through better-informed decisions at all levels. New technologies and methodologies may affect an NFI in all phases (inventory planning, implementation, analysis and reporting). The extent to which they help improve NFIs can be evaluated according to the following criteria. Do they help meet information needs better, by providing more information, new information or better information (higher precision of estimates, more accurate measurements)? Do they reduce cost, by streamlining the NFI process at different stages? Fieldwork with its many costs (transport, DSA, helpers, tools, measurement devices) is a heavy cost factor in most NFIs [for example, in the Forest Inventory and Analysis Programme of the United States Forest Service about two-thirds of the programme cost arise from field-plot work (Guldin, 2000)]. However, it is a central and indispensable source of information for many forestry variables; it is, therefore, natural to seek options for cost reduction particularly in the context of fieldwork. Do they improve the visibility or political standing of NFIs, for example by providing better and more widely available information, by increasing the overall credibility of results or by integrating new sets of attributes that increase the interest in the information to a broader group of users? Página 1 de 10Forest assessment and monitorin