Forest management planning
The principal tasks
The principal tasks of the Slovenia Forest Service in the field of forest management planning are: collecting data about forests according to the Regulation on forest management and silvicultural plans, mapping forest functions, making decennial forest management plans for 236 forest management units and 14 forest management regions, and preparing professional foundations, expert opinions, conditions, guidelines and accords for all interventions in the forest and forest space. Besides that, experts of the Slovenia Forest Service co-operate with numerous borderline branches in the space (agriculture, water management, urbanization, nature protection) and with them they reconcile different, often also conflicting interests.
Field data capturing
For field data capturing numerous new technologies are used that developed towards the end of 1990s. We efficiently use digital orthophotos and digital cadastral plans with which we have improved field orientation and precision in space data collecting. The Slovenia Forest Service is nowadays facing new challenges such as operative use of colour satellite high resolution photos, of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and enabling the permanent access to space data about forests on the Internet.
Forest management plans
Forest management plans, elaborated for a period of ten years, describe the state of forests and their development trends, set the goals of management in the future (also by taking into account the analysis of management in the past) together with guidelines and measures for the rational implementation of these goals. In the past, the principal and nearly the only objective of forest management was timber production: for building and construction, mines, wood used for heating and furniture manufacture etc. Nowadays this objective is still significant, but new ones are steadily but surely assuming importance. They are related to important forest functions such as protective, biotopic, water protective, recreational, etc. For an objective and rational assessment of these goals a map of forest functions is used, which was elaborated in 2001 and is regularly updated at renewal of plans in forest management units.