Illustrative image (Source: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – Data on forest and forest land will be collected by an electronic forest information system for decision making or statistical purposes and designing a strategy or plan for forest development.
The information was heard at a workshop on the implementation of the forest resource monitoring system in Vietnam held by the Vietnam Administration of Forestry (Vnforest) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) in the central province of Thanh Hoa on August 12.
The system will provide up-to-date information on forest resources by generating reports on the current state and changes in forests, for example a reduction in forest areas due to fire, deforestation or land-use change, said Vnforest deputy head Nguyen Ba Ngai.
Data on forest issues will no longer be gathered in a slow conventional method in which the national forest report of a specific year is only available six months later, after the MARD has received all provincial reports, Ngai noted.
He added that, thanks to the system, all forest-related information from the previous year will be immediately released early the next year.
According to Vnforest, the current state of about 5.63 million lots of forest across 40 out of 60 provinces have been uploaded to the system to date, and the other 20 provinces will have their data uploaded this year.
The forest resource monitoring system has been developed through the “Development of Information Management Systems for the Forestry Sector – Phase II (FORMIS II)” project, which aims to assist Vnforest in storing national forest inventory statistics and forest monitoring data as well as providing up-to-date reports on any forest changes.
Funded by the Government of Finland, the five-year project will be implemented until 2018.-VNA
