In June 1999 the directors of both the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL and the Swiss Forest Agency (Buwal) undersigned an agreement for the continuation of the programme «Forest Monitoring in Switzerland». The aim of this programme is to determine the present condition and to forecast the long-term development of forests in Switzerland, to analyse the dangers to which they are exposed and the causes thereof, to estimate future hazards and to deduce the implications not only for sustained management but also for forest and environmental policies.
The study programme will take into account the well-established National Inventory, for which the content and methodology for the third survey are already under way; the annual Sanasilva surveys in Europe, the Plant Health Observation Service, the long-term forest ecosystem research programme on long-term observation areas and, what is new, the sub-programmes «Soil» and «Biodiversity», two very important and problematic fields, which deserve much more attention in future.