Pursuant to the Decision No. 4273/QD-BNN-TCCB dated October 27, 2015 of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on assigning units to conduct forest inventory in 20 provinces in the period of 2015-2016, Silviculture Research Institute (SRI) was tasked with forest inventory for Quang Ngai province and Da Nang city. The objective of the project is to determine the current status of forest areas, forest stocks and areas of unforested land planned for forestry purposes; areas and stocks of forests not included in the three-forest-type planning (classification specified in Article 4, Law on Forest protection and development) associated with specific managers.

      The project mapped forest status at the commune, district and provincial levels based on satellite imagery interpretation and the information of field-surveyed image interpretation keys. For Da Nang city, two VNRedsat1 imageries collected from the Department of National Remote Sensing were interpreted. During the interpretation process, three Landsat 8 imageries and 10 Google Earth imageries were additionally used. For Quang Ngai province, the project carried out the interpretation of three VNRedsat1 imageries collected from the Department of National Remote Sensing. Five Landsat 8 imageries and 16 Google Earth imageries were also used in the interpretation process. Based on satellite imagery interpretation results and 1360 image interpretation keys (1040 for Quang Ngai province, 320 for Da Nang city) collected in the field, 195 forest status maps at commune level, 19 forest status maps at district level and 2 provincial forest status maps were developed.

      In Da Nang city, the area of land planned for forestry was 57,393.6 ha, accounting for 45% of the natural area and was mostly situated (91%) in Hoa Vang district. Natural forests made up for 96% of the area of special-use forests and 89% of protection forests, mainly concentrated in designated protection forests, landscape protection zones and nature conservation zones. The forest coverage percentage of the city was 44% according to the 2016 inventory.

      As for Quang Ngai province, the area of land planned for forestry was 285,957.8  ha, accounting for 56% of the natural area, of which 127,036.3 ha was protection forests (44%) and production forest took up 158.921.5 ha (56%). Forests in Quang Ngai were mostly situated in Ba To, Son Ha, Son Tay, Tay Tra and Tra Bong district. The forest coverage percentage of the city was 43%.

      In order to calculate the average timber volume by each forest state in the area, 545 standard plots of 1000m² were set up by random sampling method based on the information on forest state, tree species and age class available in the forest status map (220 for Da Nang, 325 for Quang Ngai). After field surveys, the stock was calculated for each state of plantations, natural forests and bamboos in the two provinces.

     The total timber stock of Da Nang city was 10,103,987.3 m³, most of which belonged to the land planned for forestry. The stock concentrated mostly in natural forest states and designated nature reserves, making up for 91%. Hoa Vang district had the greatest share of stock, comprising 94% of the entire city.

      Quang Ngai province had a total timber stock of 25,627,524m³, concentrating mainly in areas under forestry planning. Timber stock was concentrated mainly in Ba To, Son Ha, Tay Tra and Son Tay districts, where forests were mostly natural. In addition, there were 2,353,109 thousand bamboo trees, found mainly in natural forest states.

      From the inventory results, SRI developed a set of supporting documents for forest inventory for each forest owner group and organized training sessions on inventory techniques in the two provinces.