This book has been developed as a forest inventory textbook for students and could also serve as a handbook for practical foresters. We have set out to keep the mathematics in the book at a fairly non-technical level, and therefore, although we deal with many issues that include highly sophisticated methodology, we try to present first and foremost the ideas behind them. For foresters who need more details, references are given to more advanced scientific papers and books in the fields of statistics and biometrics. Forest inventory books deal mostly with sampling and measurement issues, as found here in section I, but since forest inventories in many countries involve much more than this, we have also included material on forestry applications. Most applications nowadays involve remote sensing technology of some sort, so that section II deals mostly with the use of remote sensing material for this purpose. Section III deals with national inventories carried out in different parts of world, and section IV is an attempt to outline some future possibilities of forest inventory methodologies. The editors, Annika Kangas Professor of Forest Mensuration and Management, Department of Forest Resource Management, University of Helsinki. Matti Maltamo Professor of Forest Mensuration, Faculty of Forestry, University of Joensuu. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Design-Based Sampling and Inference.- Model-Based Inference.- Mensurational Aspects.- Change Monitoring with Permanent Sample Plots.- Generalizing Sample Tree Information.- Use of Additional Information.- Sampling Rare Populations.- Inventories of Vegetation, Wild Berries and Mushrooms.- Assessment of Uncertainity in Spatially Systematic Sampling.- The Finnish National Forest Inventory.- The Finnish Multi-source National Forest Inventory - Small Area Estimationand Map Production.- Correcting Map Errors in Forest Inventory Estimates for Small Areas.- Multiphase Sampling.- Segmentation.- Inventory by Compartments.- Assessing the World's Forests.- Europe.- Asia.- North America.- Modern Data Acquisition for Forest Inventories.