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7.2.1.6 Output and timetable
Duty / Product
Timetable
The design of the questionnaire form and interview outline 1 st quarter of the 1 st year
Identification of the interested organizations, parties and various stakeholders 1 st quarter of the 1 st year
Revealing the data needs by disseminating the questionnaires, carrying out interviews, 1 st quarter of the 1 st year
etc. The various existing data sources should be examined in this part of the
implementation.
Analysis of the results of the data needs assessment including the existing data sources 1 st trimester of the 1 st
year
Defining the variables to be covered by National Forest Resource Assessment 1 st half of the 1 st year
A report will be written outlining shortly the further forest resource assessments to
cover the remaining specific data needs beyond capabilities of FRA. Report published.
1 st half of the 1 st year
The main output above is the definition of the FRA variables. One of the key results is the definition of forest and shrub land,
which should be in line with the international requirements of the FAO and IPCC. The data needs assessment must be carried
out during the first four months of the project. A short report presenting the main results would be beneficial for future
purposes.
The project staffs responsible for implementation:
Chief Technical Advisor and National Project Coordinator with help of other specialists are responsible.
7.2.2 Ground sampling
7.2.2.1 Practical arrangements
The field inventory is the most important functions of FRA for generating forest resource data. However, ground sampling is
very precarious in the Nepalese context due to difficult terrain, remoteness, labor intensive and very expensive. Thus, this
work cannot be handled by DFRS staff alone. So the project aims to decentralize the field inventory to the district level
forest organizations. Besides, outsourcing of manpower from NGOs, CBOs, academic institutions and consulting companies
will be another strategy to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of ground inventory. The technical team and DFRS staff
will take responsibilities for conducting training, controlling and monitoring of ground based forest inventory. The
possibilities for the outsourcing of the field work with the following organizations will be assessed.
The staff of District Forest Offices ( arrangement will be made by the Project Steering Committee)
Advanced level students (from the Institute of Forestry), who will commit to work for several months in the
field
Community forest user groups will also be used to collect data on the decision of the Project Steering
Committee)
Private consulting companies and other entrepreneurs.
The field work manual of 1995 will be reviewed and revised to meet the needs of the current FRA. A training session for all
of the field inventory crews will be planned and implemented. Field work can be organized in spring (mid January to end of
May) and autumn (mid September to mid December). Months from June to August are hot and rainy. Many areas are not
accessible at that time and frequent heavy rains make the field work very difficult. October is a month of Dasain and Tihar
festivals (around 3 weeks), which are socially very important and people are not willing to travel on that time. By analyzing
the physiographic and seasonal variances and socio cultural dimensions the project will make yearly plan for field inventory
work.
To cover the whole country more than 400 clusters should be measured in the field in two and half years’ time. This equals to
600 crew weeks of field inventory in total, 240 crew weeks per year. As annual field work season is around 28-30 weeks 10
crews are needed to implement the FRA and additional measurements for biodiversity, TOFs and NTFPs in total three years’
time. In addition, at least one extra inventory crew (control crew) is needed for quality verification measurements.
It is recommended to proceed work region-wise. This would result in annual reporting of the results and providing the end
users with information and showing the initial trend of development concerning the whole country. The work could be started
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