Technological and methodological assistance to the Irish National Forest Inventory I
Statistical forest inventory

A significant and successful project in the history of IFER. Its goal was to equip the workers of the Irish Forest Service (a governmental body under the Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) with technology for the implementation of the National Forest Inventory (the total of 5 sets of the Field-Map technology), train them for its use, provide support in the process of methodology elaboration (e.g. during the construction of a network of inventory plots), execute an independent quality inspection of the data collection process, and provide assistance with the NFI data processing.
IFER participated in the entire process of the Irish NFI from its inception (2002). The project ended in 2007 with an output taking the form of 3 publications: Methodology research report, Results, and Proceedings from a Conference presenting the NFI results. Since the project was successful, the NFI shall be held again at a likely future IFER participation.
IFER evaluates the entire project as particularly successful: cooperation with Irish colleagues was good, the actual NFI proceeded smoothly, and the results had optimum information capability. The whole process was relatively simple, efficient (good evaluation of the results at a comparatively low number of inventory plots resulting in low costs as well), and the NFI data are easily accessible to the expert public.
A feature peculiar to Ireland is the character of the Irish forests (nearly all of them are newly established plantations after total deforestation in the past). The local population's attitude towards them is also distinct from ours: the Irish consider forests as needlessly reducing the farm land size and, compared to the Czechs, they do not attach such cultural significance to them.