The National Council for Agricultural Research is a national public Organisation financed by the Ministry of agriculture and forest policies, with specific research interest in fields of agriculture, food, fisheries and forestry.

The monitoring and planning forest unit's interests are  forest planning and management, forest monitoring and medicinal and aromatic plants.

These activities are carryed out in compliance with the local Government, italian Forest service, national and international research centers.

Forest monitoring

Study of methods and procedures to monitor forest ecosystems: use of remote sensing data for forest classification   integrated use of NFI data and satellite images    implementation of procedures and techniques for field surveys in forest stands

Forest planning and management

Methods and tools to define national standards for monitoring, planning and management of multifunctional forests;

Land plans for forest and natural environment management guidance;

Public participation in planning processes

Initiatives and tools to facilitate the knowledge trasfer in the forest sector

Geomatics, modelling and statistical techniques applied to forest and land management

- Integrated use of GIS, mobile GIS and GPS for forest management and land surveying

- Forest sampling and estimation methods for forest management

- Statistical and artificial neural network modelling for forest and land functions evaluation

Medicinal and aromatic plants

Conservation, multiplication, characterization and domestication of medicinal and aromatic plant and field trials carryng out.

National Forest Inventory

Scientific coordination of the Italian National Forest Inventory (NFI): planning of the NFI sampling scheme and survey procedures    crew training control and processing of NFI data publishing of NFI methods data and reports (papers WEB site)

Prediction models for tree volume and phytomass

Development of models to predict volume and phytomass of tree and shrub stands: tree volume and phytomass data collection statistical analysis model calibration