Consolidating new paradigms in large-scale monitoring and assessment of forest ecosystems.

Forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services from which people benefit, and upon which all life depends. However, any rational decision related to the maintenance and enhancement of the multiple functions provided by the forests needs to be based on objective, reliable information. As such, forest monitoring and assessment are rapidly evolving as new information needs arise or new techniques and tools become available. Global change issues and utilities from ecosystem management are distinctively to be considered, so that forest inventory and mapping are broadening their scope towards multipurpose resources surveys. Recent changes in forest management perspective have promoted the consideration of forests as complex adaptive systems, thereby highlighting the need to account that such approaches actually work: forest monitoring and assessment are then expected to address and fully incorporate this perspective at global scale, seeking to support planning and management decisions that are evidence-based. This contribution provides selected considerations on the above mentioned issues, in the form of a commented discussion with examples from the literature produced in the last decade.