One of the important goals of FRA is to emphasize and promote transparency. Within this context a review of the woody volume and biomass, whose importance as forestry indicators is being widely recognized, was strongly recommended and encouraged in order to improve the process of evaluation of country information and consequently reliability of the results.
For a number of countries, due to lacking of source information, scarcity of complete and reliable information and heterogeneity of the available information, assumptions and uncertainty were quite frequent. Without detailed explanations of the procedure followed to reach the final results, data could be not always clear and comprehensible.
This review is the result of the constant effort of FRA for improving traceability of used information sources, transparency of the estimation process and quality of the results.
The review was clearly described step by step. It allowed to highlight the main difficulties faced during the estimation process and to put forward recommendations for future improvements in the assessment processes.
Furthermore, every source document collected was referenced in order to define baseline information and to facilitate the process: for future adjustments, it will be possible to go back to the original sources, and eventually revise data or define historical trends.
