FIA Tropical Island Forest Inventory Work Group

Since the Forestry Research Act (McSweeney-McNary) of 1928, the USDA Forest Service has been required to “make and keep current a comprehensive inventory and analysis of the present and prospective conditions and requirements for the renewable resources of the forest and rangelands of the United States and cooperate with the appropriate officials of each State, territory, or possession of the United States” (Resources Planning Act of 1974 (RPA, PL 93-378)).  This responsibility includes inventorying the forests of the continental United States (CONUS), Alaska and Hawaii, as well as the islands of Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, the US Virgin Islands, and Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. 

Much of the work of the group is guided by the assessment presented in the White Paper “Inventory Needs and Design for Insular Tropical Forest of the United States”

Under direction of the Agriculture Research, Extension, and Education Reform Act of 1998, the USDA Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program has moved toward a standardized sampling scheme and a core set of variables that are collected at all plots across the nation.  However, these national protocols do not easily lend themselves to work on tropical islands, and there are concerns about the effectiveness and utility of the data that will be collected (Willits et al. 2000) . 

To better serve its clients, the FIA Tropical Island Forest Inventory Work Group will improve data collection, analysis and reporting on US Commonwealth and Territorial tropical islands.  To accomplish this, we will work toward the following objectives:

• Represent the needs of tropical island forest inventories, and be a coherent voice for the clients, to the larger FIA community

• Produce and maintain a common manual for tropical islands
• Follow the National Manual for database compatibility
• Standardize codes for tropics
• Advise on regional (individual island) add-ons to the manual
• Sponsor research and development into improving FIA implementation in the tropics
• Improve sampling of small, dispersed islands
• Develop new analysis and reporting techniques for tropical data
• Examine how forest health monitoring is conducted on the islands
• Increase cross-tropics FIA/FS research in tropical forests, particularly projects with international applicability/significance (e.g. global change, Criteria and Indicators)
• Maintain a website to coordinate island work and share what is being done by FIA in the islands

Current USDA Forest Service FIA Projects on Tropical Islands:

• FIA and Related Projects in the Caribbean Islands, International Institute of Tropical Forestry

• Puerto Rico Northern Karst Belt Forest Inventory

• San Juan Bay Estuary Watershed Urban Forest Inventory

• Champion Trees of Puerto Rico

• Pacific Islands Inventory Projects, Pacific Northwest FIA Homepage

• Pacific Islands Publications, Abstracts, and Summaries

Projects of further interest:

• Eastern Arc Mountains of Kenya and Tanzania Forest Monitoring Projects, USDA Forest Service International Programs