The National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry has provided grant support for an assessment of indicators of ecosystem function that can be applied to sustainable forest management.

The project has four specific objectives:

1. Review and synthesize the current scientific basis for using indicators of ecosystem function as a tool for meeting objectives of sustainable forest management.

2. Based on the above review, propose a list of candidate functional indicators that demonstrate promise in both technical data collection requirements and application to forest management decision making.

3. Develop specific protocols for collection of data required to quantify candidate functional indicators.

4. Design a set of field trials that can be implemented to evaluate the practicality and value of the candidate functional indicators.

Please follow the links above for more information.