Cooperative Alaska Forest Inventory

The Cooperative Alaska Forest Inventory (CAFI) is a comprehensive database of boreal forest conditions and dynamics in Alaska. The CAFI consists of fieldgathered information from numerous permanent sample plots distributed across interior and south-central Alaska including the Kenai Peninsula. The CAFI currently has 570 permanent sample plots on 190 sites representing a wide variety of growing conditions. New plots are being added to the inventory annually. To date, over 60 percent of the permanent sample plots have been remeasured and approximately 20 percent have been remeasured three times. Repeated periodic inventories on CAFI permanent sample plots provide valuable long-term information for modeling of forest dynamics such as growth and yield. Periodic remeasurements can also be used to test and monitor large-scale environmental and climate change. This guide documents sampling and estimation procedures of CAFI v.1.0, and provides details of the database, including attribute description and summary statistics. To help researchers and land managers successfully initiate or expand a permanent sample site program in Alaska, this guide offers a comprehensive tutorial to establish, maintain, and process permanent sample plots in Alaska's boreal forests.