FOREST ECOSYSTEM DATA MANAGEMENT THROUGH WEBGIS WITH APPLICATION IN ELATIA FOREST, GREECE

摘要

Sustainable management of forest ecosystems is essential for their future survival and evolution. In Greece, where the rate of deforestation is increasing every year, forest management is scheduled in 10-year plans. New technologies and evolving needs create the necessity of significant improvements in respect to regulations and methods of application in order to conform to international standards. A critical point in this case is the utilization of existing data which usually are in different and incompatible formats and are also lacking of any kind of metadata information. Having said that, in the framework of developing a more effective way of forest data management, a methodological approach is proposed. It is based on analogue and digital data evaluation, classification, updating and processing through GIS technologies serviced by an internet platform (WebGIS). Data access and utilization is through a WebGIS application built specifically for this purpose. The proposed methodology is applied in the area of Elatia forest in Drama, Greece where forest management plan data in analogue form, forest and topographic maps and collected field data were used. As resulted, the proposed methodological approach gives the ability to evaluate existing data in order to be used and periodically updated. Moreover, through the platform developed, forest management experts can have remote access to forest ecosystem data reducing overall costs and time needed and helping effectively manage forest ecosystems. The WebGIS system developed can be accessed equally by non expert GIS users so it helps improve data and result dissemination thus raising public awareness.