Forest Resources Monitoring for Proper Management in Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia is considered as the center of origin with many forests richest in species diversity.  These Forests are one of Ethiopian greatest natural assets. They play an indispensible role in protection of environment, regulating climate, controlling water runoff, maintaining ecological balance and producing valuable materials. However, these forest resources are highly declined due to rapid and continuous deforestation activities; agricultural expansion and settlement. To minimize the risk, there are increasing needs to measure and monitor the extent and condition of Ethiopian forests for management purposes. Monitoring is an essential tool in ecological and biodiversity management. It improves the manager’s ability to make proper decisions through a wide range of forest data collection by agencies including Federal and State and Territory governments. These are often collected using different methods and are not always consistent across boundaries making national compilations difficult. Monitoring indicates changing methods of forest mapping over time also poses problems for assessing trends in forest extent and condition.

Keywords:  Forest, assessments, ecology, monitoring, management