[Archive] Monitoring vegetation changes in conservation management of forests

Monitoring should be an integral part of conservation management in forests. It provides managers with information on the status and trend of species or habitats, and indicates whether specific goals have been achieved. Vegetation assessments can be used to monitor habitat quality as well as plant and species composition. Plants can be more easily monitored than many animals. This Bulletin provides advice on setting objectives and selecting appropriate parameters for measurement when monitoring vegetation. The need for sufficiently rigorous sampling is discussed, and measurement methods are outlined. Techniques for data interpretation are given and approaches to monitoring in different situations are described. This publication is still available in hardcopy.