For over 100 years long-term monitoring of the condition and development of the forest has been one of our core tasks. The sustainable use of the natural resource wood as well as maintaining the manifold services of the forest require standardised data collection over many years.
The resulting data series are a valuable basis for all kinds of research questions and an indicator for the Swiss forests’ health.
Naturally, we use a multitude of individual research plots for specific, targeted questions. This chapter, however, only concerns the long-term monitoring plots.