A Study of the Physical Asset Accounts for the Forested Land and Forest Stock

摘要

Although the forest accounts in Korea have been constructed partly as the research projects since the mid-1990s, the framework of the accounts has not yet been established. The objective of this study is to provide the physical asset accounts of forested land and forest stock based on the system of integrated environmental economic accounts(SEEA) by utilizing the restructured 2004 statistical yearbook of forestry in Korea. In 2004 yearbook, new variables such as logging area and volumes are added. The logging area and volumes play important roles in constructing forest accounts because the basic structure of the physical asset accounts are composed of the opening stock, closing stock, and the changes between the two. The changes between the openingand closing stock are largely explained by the harvest. In forest accounts, in general, the main elements for the increase in stock are afforestation and reforestation while the main cause for the decrease is logging. In this study we separate the logging into natural or man-made causes. In addition, other useful information for the status of forest is recorded in an annex even if it is not necessary element in the account table. According to the forested land asset accounts generated with 2003 data, the logging area is larger than the reforestation area, and the total forested land is decreased. The logging volume is 0.4% of the total stock volume, and the planed logging volume is more than 3 times larger than the damaged logging volume. The damaged logging volumes by man-made causes is about 300,000 m~3, and it is much larger than that of natural causes, which is about 55,000 m~3.