The study was originally developed to cover national-level multiple resource inventories - surveys designed to meet the needs of two or more sectors (for example, forestry and agriculture, range and wildlife, etc.). However, as results to our questionnaire survey started to come in, it became apparent that I had to change the terminology to Multipurpose Resource Inventories and scope to accommodate those inventories designed to provide multiple products, functions, and service as well. The study was also originally planned to be a comparison of features commonly measured in Multiple Resource Inventories and finding common denominators similar to the methods and results of the European Nomenclature study (Köhl and Päivinen 1996). The European study was aimed at developing a standard set of forest terms (nomenclatures) at the national level so a Pan-European Forest Information System could be developed. In order to develop recommendations for international standards, there zhas to be some common goal in mind - for example, the reason or need for standardisation. In the case of the European study, the goal was uniform terminology for the European countries, to be used in remote sensing based assessments. Another study on European Forest Information and Communication Systems (EFICS) aimed at clarifying the possibilities and needs of harmonised information for the European Union and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries. Some common nomenclatures have been developed for forestry for submitting data for the United Nations' Global Forest Resource Assessment (FRA-2000) and for some of the conventions and protocols resulting from the UNCED (Granholm et al. 1996). However there has been no move to cross-walk the information from these independent efforts. Until that need arises, there is no compelling reason for developing international standards. At the national level, however, the need may exist. But each nation has its own mandates and reasons for conducting MRI. Some may be multi-sectoral and others may be extensions of forest inventories to pick up environmental ecological data. Since needs vary by country, there is no driving force to deveop a set of intenational standards. Therefore and because the definition of MRI was broadened, I changed the focus of the comparison. This study now compares methods for conducting various types of MRIs rather than features measurd . I present general recommendations for standardisation where appropriate.
