IDENTIFICATION OF HIGH CONSERVATION VALUE FOREST (HCVF) 
IN NATURAL PRODUCTION FOREST 
TO SUPPORT IMPLEMENTATION OF SFM CERTIFICATION IN INDONESIA 
USING REMOTE SENSING AND GIS 
Y. B. Sulistioadi Y. A. Hussin A. Sharifi 
Department of Natural Resources, The International Institute for Geoinformation Science 
and Earth Observation (ITC), Hengelosstraat 99, 7500 AA, 
Enschede, Netherlands, Fax: (31)53-4874-388, Sulistioadi@itc.nl, Hussin@itc.nl, Alisharifi@itc.nl 
PS WG VII/2: 
KEY WORDS: Forest Certification, HCVF, Tropical Forests, Indonesia, Remote Sensing, GIS 
ABSTRACT: 
Indonesian forests are in critical situation. Very high rate of forest degradation resulted from unsustainable forest management, 
rampant illegal logging, forest area encroachment, conversion and natural disaster, i.e. fire, all together urges rapid improvement of 
management system of Indonesia’s forest resources. Forest certification is one tool that can support the achievement of sustainable 
forest management goal. Under current operation of Joint Certification Protocol between FSC and LEI in Indonesia, forest 
management units must be able to show the required (process and) performance indicated in LEI Criteria and Indicators as well as 
FSC Principles and Criteria to attain certification of their products. Nevertheless, the gap between current practices and performance 
required by forest certification schemes is still enormous. The management of High Conservation Value Forest is one of FSC 
principles for sustainable forest management. However, some difficulties were found when forest management unit tries to identify 
the HCVF, since the definition, terms and available guideline for HCVF identification are necessarily generic and global. Therefore, 
this study tries to implement a detailed method for identification of High Conservation Value Forest (HCVF) in a natural production 
forest using remote sensing and GIS. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Indonesia is in the third rank of countries with largest tropical 
rain forest area in the world, after Brazil and Congo. Varies 
from mangrove, swamp and riparian forest to hilly dipterocarp 
forest, Indonesia's forest serves as host for unique composition 
of biodiversity. As the direct effect from over utilization of 
forest resources, fire disaster and forest area conversion, 
Indonesia is now facing very high rate of deforestation. 
Considering the high rate of environmental damage as well as 
social impact caused by large-scale commercial forest 
utilization, the paradigm of forest management had been shifted 
from sustainable yield oriented to sustainable resources 
oriented. In simple words, forest management operations should 
be able to maintain the condition and function of forest as it is, 
moreover, forest should be maintained so that its social 
functions kept intact. In spite of that restriction, forest 
management should also be able to produce sustainable timber 
products to gain sufficient economic benefits. These three 
aspects, ie. environmentally sound, socially accepted and 
economically feasible; then establish the pillars of Sustainable 
Forest Management. 
As committed in Agenda 21 in UN Conference on Environment 
and Development (UN-CED) Summit in Rio de Janeiro 1992, a 
number of international and regional initiatives has been started 
to develop a set of standard to be complied by forest 
management operations. From this point then the issue of forest 
certification emerged, while some certification scheme also 
established in international and national level. The idea behind 
forest certification is that consumers, with concern to 
deforestation and forest degradation, will prefer to buy timber 
products from well-managed forests. 
FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) is a council established by a 
group of timber users, traders, and representatives of NGOs and 
formally launched at October 1993. One year after its assembly, 
FSC released a definitive set of Principles and Criteria, which 
will be used for assessment of sustainable forest management 
operations. 
One FSC principle is the management of High Conservation 
Value Forest (HCVF). This is relatively new principle, which 
has been developed to replace the previously used concept of 
old growth or virgin forest. Therefore, the identified HCVF has 
large consequences for management options and should be 
taken into consideration in establishment of forest management 
plan. Further, meeting the conservation requirements of FSC 
certification scheme requires full integration of HCVF and 
conservation strategies into overall management plans and field 
operations. 
Since HCVF is a spatial phenomenon, spatial information is 
very useful to support the process of HCVF identification. The 
use of remote sensing and GIS to support this field of study is 
definitely potential. Since the initial step in the identification of 
different landscapes and forest types occur in the study area, 
and at the later stage, the resulted landscape and forest type map 
can be analysed with the existing spatial data to assess the 
spatial distribution, status and threats to identified HCVF. At 
the end, the forest management unit shall establish a spatial 
conservation strategy according to findings in HCVF 
identification and later on integrate it with existing forest 
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