Area90FRA1990
Forest Area for the year 1990 according to FRA 1990. (Table 3 of FAO Forestry Paper 124).
Area90FRA2000
Forest Area for the year 1990 according to FRA 2000 country data. (Appendix 3 of FAO Forestry Paper 140) (http://www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra/index_tables.jsp)
AreaChangeFRA1990
Annual net forest area change for the period 1980-1990 according to FRA 1990. (Table 4 of FAO Forestry Paper 124).
AreaChangeFRA2000
Annual net forest area change for the period 1990-2000 according to FRA 2000 country data. (Appendix 3 of FAO Forestry Paper 140) (http://www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra/index_tables.jsp)
Country
See reporting unit.
Forest Area
Area of natural forest and forest plantations.
For FRA 1990 the minimum area reported is 100 ha. Rubber plantations are not included as forest plantations.
For the developing countries a threshold value of 5 meters for the minimum height of woody vegetation and a minimum of 10 % for crown cover was used for the definition of forest for FRA 1990.
For industrialized countries a threshold value of 7 meters for the minimum height of woody vegetation and a minimum 20 % for crown cover was used for the definition of forest for FRA1990.
FRA 2000 employed a uniform set of definitions of forests globally. For FRA 2000 the minimum area reported was 0,5 ha. The global threshold value for crown cover is 10% and the threshold value for woody vegetation is 5 meters for FRA 2000.
Reporting Unit
The unit for which forest area is reported for FRA and for which the areas and area changes between the two assessments have been compared in the present working paper. In most cases there have been no changes in national boundaries between FRA 1990 and FRA 2000 and a reporting unit is therefore usually same as a country during FRA2000. However for the countries where there has been changes of national boundaries the reporting units employed are the extent of the nation during FRA 1990 (or in the case of Belgium and Luxembourg the aggregated figure reported for FRA 2000). In the current working paper the word "country" has however been used broadly as a synonym for reporting unit purely for linguistic reasons.
FRA 2000 Remote Sensing Survey (RSS)
FRA 2000 consists of three main components: I) Assessment of forest resources based on existing national information. II) A series of special studies to complement the quantitative survey of forest area and area change (on topics like Trees Outside the Forest, Non-Wood Forest Products, Forest Management, Forest Fires, etc.), and III) the FRA 2000 Remote Sensing Survey. The remote sensing survey is based on 117 objectively selected satellite imageries (sample units) covering about 10 percent of the forest area in the pan tropical zone. The remote sensing survey interprets land use in the sample units from three points in time (around 1980, 1990 and 2000) allowing for studies of forest cover change processes during the two decades 1980-2000. For the three tropical regions, the survey provides regional estimates of forest area and land use changes that are independent of the national assessments of forest resources based on country submissions
