The State Environmental Monitoring - Monitoring of forests

The spatial dataset concerns forest monitoring, which is carried out as part of the nature monitoring subsystem of the State Environmental Monitoring coordinated by the Chief Inspector of Environmental Protection. This monitoring is a system for assessing the forest environment and the health condition of stands on the basis of continuous or periodic observations and measurements of selected indicators on permanent observation plots. The purpose of forest monitoring is to provide the data on the state of forests and the processes leading to deformations in their structure or disturbances in their functioning for the purposes associated with developing a forest policy and managing forest ecosystems in order to improve the quality of the natural environment in the country. Monitoring is carried out in a network of permanent observation plots: "1st Level Permanent Observation Plots (1st level POPs)", "2nd Level Permanent Observation Plots (2nd level POPs)" and "Intensively Monitored Permanent Observation Plots (IM POPs)". The research program includes the following indicators: biosocial position, diameter of breast height trees, defoliation, needle length or leaf size, flowering, number of needleage classes, crown shading, discoloration, secondary shoots, shoot growth rates, crown thinning type, proportion of dead branches, abundance of seeds, crown visibility, symptoms and causes of tree damage.