10 - Applications of Modern Technology and Ecophysiology to Forest Management

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the applications of modern technology and ecophysiology to forest management. It is essential that the policymakers and managers have thorough information about the forests such as the condition, the historical changes and impacts of events such as drought, fire, disease, or management practices. There are some useful tools available for obtaining, storing, and manipulating that information. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is a spatial data management system used for collecting, storing, retrieving, transforming, combining, analyzing, and displaying spatial data representing geographic properties or ecological processes. The basic task of a GIS is to record geographical data such as survey sites, roads, rivers, and areas of particular forest types. GIS depends on its two most common models: vector and raster. In the vector model, the location of points, lines, and areas is described by single or multiple coordinate pairs representing the ends of line segments. On the other hand, in the raster model, the data plane is divided up into a rectangular matrix of cells, and a point is represented as a single cell.