Department

The Romanian NFI is managed by the Romanian Forest Research and Management Institute. The entire country forest area is covered each year, and one forth from the total number of sample plots are measured annually, representing circa 6000 permanent plots per year plus 1250 temporary plots.

Personnel

There are currently 21 field crews with 3 persons per field crew. One crew is devoted to the control of field measurements. Another 16 persons are working on NFI photo-interpretation, logistics, data-base, dendrochronology and soil chemical analysis.

Field Crew Map

Measurement Equipments

The field equipments were selected to meet the requirements of precision and efficiency and enable the measurement of all trees characteristics on the sample plots. Field crews are therefore equipped with electronic devices such as field computers, GPS and Vertex III. A specific computer program was developed at the Forest Research and Management Institute that permits to record all the measured data directly on computers and to feed the databases.

Quality Assurance

There are three ways of controlling data quality. The most efficient is a very good training of the field crews and inter-calibration tests. A training course of 2 weeks is organized each year.

Another way is to use correlations, restriction and logical connections on field data collection software and to control the data collected by field crews using specialized software.

The third way is to control the field work by proceeding to re-measurement of a proportion of field plots by the control crews.