Indian Forest Service Examination Working Plans & Forest Management Planning: practice questions

1 · Purpose and history of working plans · medium

Who introduced scientific forestry and systematic working plans to British India?

1. Dietrich Brandis, later the first Inspector General of Forests
2. Heinrich Cotta, director of the Tharandt forestry academy in Saxony
3. Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the United States Forest Service
4. Harry Champion, author of the classification of Indian forest types

2 · Purpose and history of working plans · hard

Why is a written plan especially important in forestry compared with most enterprises?

1. Forest produce has no market value, so plans replace prices as the guide to decisions
2. Forests are always too small to be managed without detailed written instructions
3. Crops take decades while officers change every few years
4. Forest law forbids officers from making any decision not written in advance

3 · Division of the forest: working circles, felling series, compartments · medium

An overlapping working circle is constituted for:

1. An area claimed by two forest divisions whose boundary is disputed
2. Compartments that are to be clear felled twice within the same rotation
3. A resource that occurs across other working circles, such as bamboo or NTFPs
4. Forests on the border between two states, managed jointly by both state departments

4 · Stock mapping and growing-stock assessment · medium

Total enumeration of growing stock differs from sampling enumeration in that it:

1. Measures every tree above a minimum size in the area
2. Measures trees on a few plots and expands the results with a stated precision
3. Estimates growing stock only from satellite imagery without field work
4. Counts only trees of the most valuable species

5 · Prescriptions for silviculture, felling and regeneration · hard

Which set of items is specified in a working-circle prescription for a clear-felling system?

1. Felling cycle, girth limits, diameter classes and number of trees for selection marking
2. Rotation, felling series, annual coupes, yield, sequence of fellings and regeneration method
3. Royalty rates, sale procedures and names of approved contractors
4. Wildlife census methods and tourist entry fees only

6 · Working-plan codes and national guidelines · easy

Which is a requirement of modern Indian working-plan codes?

1. A statistically designed inventory with geo-referenced plots
2. Total enumeration of every tree in the division at each revision
3. Exclusion of all non-timber forest products from the plan
4. Exclusion of joint forest management areas from the plan

7 · Working-plan codes and national guidelines · medium

Modern codes ask that management objectives be stated in measurable terms mainly so that:

1. Plans become shorter and need no statistics or appendices
2. Objectives can be changed freely during the plan
3. Forest staff need no training to read them
4. Achievement can be assessed at the end of the plan period

8 · Management plans in other systems: US national forest plans, European forest management plans · medium

US national forest plans usually set direction for about how long?

1. Twelve to fifteen years
2. One year
3. One hundred years
4. Three years

9 · Microplans for community and joint forest management · hard

Which is a recurring problem reported in JFM and community forestry experience?

1. Elite capture and weak inclusion of women and the poorest households
2. Too much timber left uncut, causing all forests to become overstocked
3. Microplans that are always too detailed for staff to read
4. Complete absence of any regeneration in protected areas

10 · Criteria and indicators in planning · medium

Which of these is a suitable indicator for a working plan's objective of improving forest condition?

1. The number of forest offices built in the division
2. The salary bill of the forest division each year
3. Area of very dense and moderately dense forest
4. The length of the working-plan document in pages