Recreation Index Method

This paper describes the Recreation Index Method as it was developed by the "Faculté universitaire des Sciences agronomiques" during the research project AIR3-CT94-2327 financed by the European Commission. The projects name was "Development and harmonization of monitoring systems for forest resources management in Europe" and the objective was to design a set of inventory systems for forest resources management, applicable in all regions of the European Union for the optimal decision making in the production of multiple goods and services. Several universities and research institutes participated in this research. The "Faculté universitaire des Sciences agronomiques" focused its research on the design of a forest inventory method that enables foresters to assess the recreation function of woodlands. An extensive set of tools already exists for assessing the economic function (woods, production) of forests. Multiple descriptions of volume tables, taper functions, inventory systems, and others were published throughout times and these techniques have become common goods to foresters. However, until now, only very few tools exist for assessing the recreation function of a forest. The Recreation Index Method definitely changes this situation and is a substantial step towards the global evaluation of the recreation value of forests. The method that is described hereafter, produces objective indexes that reflect how well a forest or forest elements meet eh society's demand for recreation: the more a forest corresponds to the publics demand, the higher the recreation index will be. These indexes are calculated from three data sets: 1. Demand: the relative importance that the public attributes to th inventoried items; 2. Offer: an inventory of items in the forest that affect the recreation value of this forest; 3. Appreciation curves and their reference values: the equations that produce the recreation indexes from the inventoried number of items. The method requires an extensive set of data as well as dreadful calculations. The RECRE software was developed to automate the procedures of this method. The computer program stores all the necessary data and easily calculates all the Recreation Indexes. The software and the manual that comes with it are available from the European Community of from the Faculté universitaire des Sciences agronomiques (see address in annexes). Althouth the Recreation Index Method compares offer and demand, it does not take into account the external constrains that influence the offer, the demand, and the interaction between both. Budget and personnel constrains typically influence the offer, while reputation and publicity often modify the demand. Accessibility, extremely high social pressure (especially near cities), vandalism, and even crime are important factors that determine how offer and demand will interact. Considering all those external constrains highly complicates the forest recreation problem. But, before investigating on these external constrains, one may want to know more about the intrinsic value of a forest. That's the important role of the Recreation Index Method.