Distributed geographic information systems in forest management

Managing a forest in the present implies a look towards the future and, in the field of geographic information systems (GIS), it involves the interoperability of existing data and information, which are increasingly determinant in intelligent forest planning and management. Recognizing the global importance of forests in economic, environmental and social dimensions presents a new challenge for those interested in ensuring the sustainability of forest resources. Global connectivity provided by the Internet and the latest solutions based on open source and open standards/specifications made available by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) allowed the development of Distributed GIS (DGIS). These can be seen as true spatial data infrastructures (SDI), enabling multiple users and organizations to share multiple levels of geographic information (GI) and applications. This article establishes the role of DGIS based on open source software in forest management, describing an application created for a forestry organization. The introduction of the DGIS was made based on the assessment of the needs and on the model capability of overcoming some of the existing limitations using free and open source software.