TITLE:
The Genesis and Paradigm Shift in Forest Inventory: Bangladesh Chapter
AUTHORS:
Mahmood Hossain
KEYWORDS:
Biomass Stocking, Carbon Assessment, Forest Policy, Inventory, Sustainable Management, Volume Stocking
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Forestry,
Vol.12 No.4,
October
18,
2022
ABSTRACT: Bangladesh (Indo-Bangladesh to independent Bangladesh) has more than 250
years of history in forest inventory. The Boundary demarcation of the
Sundarbans forest in 1764 was the first record of forest inventory. A total of
30 inventories have been recorded that were started to form the boundary
demarcation to complex biodiversity, biomass, and carbon stock assessment.
These inventories used simple cartographic to complex satellite image
processing techniques, software base data/information collection methods, and
sophisticated statistical procedures in data analysis. Eventually, the history
of the forest inventory of Bangladesh is about 100 years older than the history
of forest management. This study aimed to classify the inventories into distinct
time frames based on outputs and align them with the motive of rulers, existing
forest policy, and contemporary global and national issues. The historical
records forest inventory has been divided into four distinct periods, e.g., Mid eighteenth to the
late nineteenth century: 1764-1876; Early twenty century: 1905-1924; Mid-twenty
to late twenty century: 1958-2000; and Early twenty-first century: 2001-present).
The objectives/outputs of each inventory were highly linked with the motive of
rulers, policy statements, available technologies, and recent issues from
national and global perspectives.