Abstract: Based on the current national continuous forest inventory(NFI)system in China,three methods for producing annual national estimates of forest resources were presented at first.Then,by using the main data of national forest inventories from the 5th to 8th NFIs,the two feasible methods at the moment,“annual-rolling” method and “updating + predicting” method,were compared for the time-effectiveness,stability,and certainty of the national estimates.The results showed that the “updating + predicting” method can produce time-effective,stable and reliable annual national estimates,which is worthy to be recommended for application at present.

Key words: forest resource, data updating, predicting, annual monitoring