The continuous field view of representing forest geographically: from cartographic representation towards improved management planning

Enhanced vizualization leads to better forest management solutions. This paper discusses the application of numerical remote sensing and geographic information systems to forest inventory. Natural phenomena usually exhibit both continuous and discrete behaviour. Discrete models have been used since the inception of aerial photography, long before the introduction of mathematical statistics, computers or remote sensing but today, forest attributes can also be described as continuous surfaces. This paper briefly presents the uses and limitations of a popular non-parametric estimator (the k-nearest neighbour): it improves visual representation, and provides a better input for GIS based modelling, thus facilitating natural resource inventory and management planning. However, in many countries, the operational forest management planning approaches still require some discretisation of continuous surfaces into areal units, corresponding to virtual –or dynamic- forest compartments