Eur J Forest Res (2006) 125: 361368

DOI 10.1007/s10342-006-0129-3

O R I GI N A L P A P E R

Christoph Kleinn David Morales-Hidalgo

An inventory of Guadua (Guadua angustifolia) bamboo in the Coffee

Region of Colombia

Received: 28 February 2005 / Accepted: 17 February 2006 / Published online: 20 April 2006

Springer-Verlag 2006

Abstract Management of renewable natural resources

and the corresponding policy formulation should be
founded on reliable data and information. This refers
both to information on the resource itself and to information on the market situation. In this paper, we present
methodology and major results of an inventory of the
Guadua resources, in a study area of about 1 million ha
within the Coee Region of Colombia. This inventory
produced for the rst time sample-based statistical estimations of the Guadua area and growing stock. In the
study area, land cover of Guadua patches was estimated
to be 3.9% or about 40,000 ha (minimum patch area
0.3 ha). This is higher than gures published earlier.
Estimation for mean number of standing culms (including shoots and dry culms) per hectare was 6,940 with a
mean diameter at breast height of 10.8 cm, apparent
commercial volume of 654 m3/ha, commercial wood
volume of 304 m3/ha, oven-dry biomass of 311 ton/ha,
and total carbon stock of 156 ton/ha. While the lowintensity sampling approach worked well and may serve
as an example for similar studies, we identied a number
of issues for further research, particularly in what refers
to as the basic mensurational models for Guadua volume
and biomass estimation from inventories.
Keywords Sampling Renewable natural resources
Forest inventory

Introduction
The management of renewable natural resources and the
formulation of the corresponding policies and conserCommunicated by Hans Pretzsch
C. Kleinn (&) D. Morales-Hidalgo
Institute of Forest Management, Georg-August-Universitat
Gottingen, Busgenweg 5, 37077 Gottingen, Germany
E-mail: ckleinn@gwdg.de
Tel.: +49-551-393472
Fax: +49-551-399787
Present address: E-mail: dmorale@gwdg.de

vation strategies should be founded on reliable data and

information. The information need refers to the resource
itself and to the market to which the resource eventually
goes. Inventories provide an important part of the natural resource information.
Guadua (Guadua angustifolia Kunth) is a bamboo
species native to the tropical regions in Central and
South America. It grows in natural stands, predominantly along rivers either as pure stands or as mixed with
trees. More and more, Guadua stands are also established articially on lands that had been previously under other use like pasture or coee. Typical for natural
Guadua stands in the Coee Region of Colombia is that
they are relatively small and irregular in shape, thus
forming a highly fragmented pattern.
Guadua culms have been traditionally used for many
purposes, such as construction and handicraft. It is assumed that the utilization of Guadua as a natural
renewable raw material can be enhanced and eventually
turned into an economic alternative for farmers, particularly in the Coee Region of Colombia. Much research has, therefore, been initiated in the past years on
Guadua, focused particularly on utilization aspects.
Now, more and more projects also deal with the natural
production process, i.e. the identication of suitable
silvicultural practices, of suitable sites and with the
development of management models (Camargo 2004,
2006; Camargo et al. 2003; Garc a 2004).
As baseline information, data on area and status of
the Guadua stands are required for many of those projects. In this paper, we present methods and major results of a Guadua inventory that had been carried out in
the year 2002 in the Coee Region of Colombia with the
objective of producing statistical estimations and of
developing an inventory protocol for further applications. We adapted statistical sampling methods widely
used in forest inventory where much research has been
done on sampling and response design optimization
(Schreuder et al. 1993). Among the assets of statistical
sampling for resources inventories is that point estimations can be accompanied by interval estimations, i.e.

362

the precision of the estimations can be quantied. This,

together with the denition of a clear protocol, adds to
the general credibility of the results.
One of the major impediments for forest inventory is
the cost involved, and this was no dierent in the Guadua inventory project described, in which the inventory
was to provide input data for a research project under
limited resources. Some research, particularly for forest
inventories of larger areas, is currently done on lowintensity sampling (e.g. Thuresson 2002; Kleinn et al.
2005), an approach that has also been applied in this
study.

Study area
The study area is located in the central mountain range
of the Andes, in the Coee Region of Colombia, and
extends over parts of the Departments of Valle del
Cauca, Quindio, Risaralda and Caldas (see also Fig. 2),
the UTM grid coordinates being (zone 18) 1064421,
922515 and 1195757, 1122579. The area was selected
such that it covered an altitudinal range between 900
and 2,000 m, where there are favourable growing conditions for Guadua. The total area was 1,029,525 ha.
Coee had been the major crop in that region; pastures and plantain being other agricultural land uses.
Mean annual precipitation is 2,750 mm with two major
rainy seasons (April to June and August to November),
and mean annual temperature is around 21C. According to the life zoning proposed by Holdridge et al. (1971)
the study area belongs to the following life zones:
tropical humid forest, tropical very humid forest, tropical dry forest and premontane tropical humid forest.
For sampling studies, the sampling frame needs to be
dened from which sample selection takes place. Here,
the sampling frame is dened by all Guadua patches in
the study region with a minimum patch area of 0.3 ha.
This threshold value was dened in discussion with
Colombian experts, who stated that smaller patches are
less attractive for commercial harvesting.

Methods
Commonly, two basic elements of information are required in large area natural resources inventories: (1) the
estimation of area and (2) the estimation of characteristics of the resource per unit of area.
Estimation of the total area of the very irregular and
fragmented patches of Guadua is a challenge. Because of
the fragmentation, the small size of the patches and the
topography, medium resolution satellite imagery of
about 1530 m appeared to be problematic and was not
taken into consideration. For economic reasons, high
resolution satellite imagery could not be used, so that
we resorted to readily available aerial photographs
taken between 1990 and 1995. While photographs of
712 years old are critical for many inventory studies,

here it appeared justied as experts conrm that considerable changes have not taken place during that time
period. To check this statement, verication observations were taken and used for calibration of the aerial
photo-based area estimation.
From the interpretation of the aerial photographs,
the projected area of Guadua culms was estimated. This
area, however, needed to be reduced to correct for the
slop-over of culms at the Guadua stand boundary (see
Fig. 1). The width of this strip along the stand boundary, which is under the vertical projection of the culms
but where there are no culms growing was measured
during the inventory at many points at the stand
boundaries. The corrected area is then what we call the
eective area.
Sampling was done by systematic sampling, where
sample size was determined by the available budget. On
a randomly located 10 km 10 km grid in NorthSouth
orientation (see Fig. 2), 103 sample points fell into the
study area. For each point, the most recent aerial photograph was searched in the Instituto Geograco
Agust n Codazzi (IGAC, Bogota), the central point of
which was closest to the sampling point. Eventually,
suitable aerial photographs could be found for 89 sampling points. The remaining 14 sample points were
treated as non-response.
On each photograph a sample plot was installed such
that the area in the eld was 3 km 3 km. This air
photo plot was located at the centre of the photograph
to reduce geometric distortions as much as possible. For
cost reasons and the lack of appropriate digital elevation
models, distortion-free orthophotos could not be produced. The prints were scanned in 600 dpi resolution so
that an interpretation on screen was possible.
Because of its peculiar texture in the aerial photographs and their typical fragmented shape, it was not a
major problem to distinguish and identify Guadua
stands. Within the aerial photo plots, all Guadua patches were delineated.
Field verication was done for 21 randomly selected
sample areas out of the total of 89; the corresponding 21
aerial photo plots were geo-referenced for this exercise.
Following this verication, some new patches needed to
be included and some eliminated from the maps generated for the aerial photo sample plots. This eld verication recorded both interpretation errors and real
changes that have occurred between taking the aerial
photographs and the inventorywhere we assume that
interpretation errors were at a minimum because of the
specic and relatively easily identiable texture of Guadua stands. A calibration factor was calculated from
this verication exercise to calibrate the nal area estimate.
For the estimation of Guadua stand characteristics, a
two-stage sampling design was used, using the base grid
of 10 km 10 km. From the 89 aerial photo plotswhich were considered a set of primary plotsa subsample of 13 was randomly selected for eld sampling.
Within each of these 13 selected primary plots, 10 sec-

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Fig. 1 Illustration of the
concept of eective area. Left: a
Guadua stand boundary where
the projection of crowns
extends into the adjacent
agricultural eld; the highly
irregular crown projection
requires smoothing when
delineation is done in aerial
photographs. Right: illustration
of the dierence between
crown-projected area and
eective area of a Guadua
patch; the outer bold line is the
smoothed delineation of crown
projection; the inner line is the
estimated area where culms
actually grow. Here, three
larger tree crowns are visible
within the Guadua area

ondary plots of 10 m 10 m were randomly chosen.

For this second-stage sampling, the mapped Guadua
stands were used as a sampling frame, i.e. all eld plots
were located completely in Guadua stands as illustrated
in Fig. 2b. Primary plots without Guadua (delineated
cover 0%) were not eld sampled. For each primary
unit, more than ten secondary plot locations were prepared by random selection in the oce. If, in the eld, a
plot did not fall into a Guadua stand (because of
changes of land use since taking the aerial photographs),
the eld crews omitted that plot and searched the next
plot in the list, until a total of ten plots was completed.
In each secondary sampling unit all Guadua culms
were diameter measured. Diameter was dened as the
diameter at the middle of the internode located at a
breast height of 1.3 m. This denitionand not an
absolute height valuewas used to avoid having the
diameter measurement at a node. Development stage
and health status of each culm were also observed. Some
basic site attributes were recorded (such as elevation,
aspect, slope, distance to water bodies) and variables on
management [such as origin of the stand (planted or
natural), silvicultural treatments and harvesting intensity]. To adjust the area estimated from aerial photographs to the eective area, for each secondary unit close
to a stand boundary, two distance measurements were
taken from border culms to the point where the crown
projection hits the ground. Details of the protocol and
the denitions used are in D. Morales and C. Kleinn
(unpublished data).
Interest was also in variables that cannot directly be
observed, such as apparent volume (i.e. the total culm
volume including the hollow parts), wood volume (the
volume of the woody walls of the culms), oven-dry
biomass, and carbon content. We distinguished here

commercial and total volume, and dene the commercial

volume as the volume of the culm sections of mature
Guadua that is typically extracted for utilization in the
Coee Region of Colombia. Total volume refers to the
total culm volume from the ground to the top.
For these attributes, models needed to be applied that
predict the attributes of interest from variables measured
in the inventory such as number of culms and diameter
at breast height. However, for estimation of volume and
biomass of Guadua in Colombia, there is still a lack of
suitable models. We used and compared two approaches:
Approach 1: the ocial approach in Colombia,
commonly applied in practice, assumes that the commercial parts of ten culms correspond to 1 m3 of
apparent commercial volume (Ministerio del Ambiente
2002). Obviously, this approach implies assumptions
about the average length of the commercial culm and
about the average diameter. However, Garc a (2004)
nds for his data sets that ten culms yield 1.3 m3 of
apparent volume, i.e. 30% more!
Approach 2: if we assume that the commercial part of
the Guadua culms resembles a cylinder, then we may
calculate apparent commercial volume va (m3) from
culm diameter dc (cm) and commercial culm length lc
(m) by the basic geometric formula for the volume of a
cylinder


p dc 2
lc

va
4 100
Commercial culm length is not measured for each
culm, and needs to be dened or modelled. While the
norms which are applied in Colombia use a standard
length of 16 m (Ministerio del Ambiente 2002), we ap-

364
Fig. 2 Study area and sample
point locations. Five provinces
in the western part of Colombia
of Caldas, Quind o, Risaralda,
Tolima and Valle form the
Coee Region of Colombia; the
study area is completely
situated within the Coee
Region (map A and enlarged
map). In sample points with
aerial photographs, aerial
photo plots were established
and all Guadua patches
mapped (map B); within these
patches, ten secondary plots
were randomly selected per
aerial photo plot

plied here the model given in Arbelaez (1996), which

gives the total culm length lc (m) as a function of culm
perimeter pc at breast height by a simple conversion
factor of 0.56: lc 0:56pc 0:56pdc
This value for
total length is then reduced to commercial length by a
factor of 0.7, which we derived from Garcia (2004).
Inserting this length model in the above formula for
cylinder volume and combining the constants yield a
simple model for apparent commercial volume per culm:
va 9:6722  105 dc3

In all approaches for commercial volume we excluded
broken culms and shoots.
Furthermore,for wood volume, oven-dry biomass,
and carbon content of Guadua culms, there is still a
considerable lack of models and conversion factors.
Therefore, we again used simple geometric approxima-

tions. For wood volume calculation we took the average

wall thickness of Guadua culms of 1.58 cm as reported
from measurements at three dierent culm heights by
Garcia (2004) and applied the basic geometric model of
a tube with outer diameter dc as an approximation.
For this calculation, we used total culm length from the
model given in Arbelaez (1996) and applied eventually a
form factor of 0.78 as reported by the same author to
account for the conical shape of the total culm.
We calculated oven-dry biomass from wood volume
with the values for specic density from Garcia (2004)
who reports an average value of 0.67 g/cm3 and a range
from 0.36 to 0.813 g/cm3. For conversion of dry biomass
to carbon, we used the factor 0.5, an approximation
widely used in forestry when more specic information is
not available (Brown 1997).

365

The standard error was calculated for all estimations

from the estimators for two-stage sampling. We used the
estimator for simple random sampling in both stages
although at the rst stage we applied systematic sampling. As a consequence, our estimations of the standard
error must be seen as conservative estimations, i.e. the
true standard error is likely to be lower.

Results
Area estimation
Total Guadua stand area, delineated as crown projected
area and reduced by a calibration factor of 0.96 resulting
from eld verication, was estimated to be 3.9%
(SE% = 10.7%), corresponding to an absolute area of
about 40,000 ha. Mean patch size was estimated to be
2.9 ha (SE% = 4.8%), ranging in the aerial photograph
sample plots from 0.3 to 43.7 ha. It is interesting to note
that the maximum Guadua patch perimeter observed in
the sample was about 15,000 m for a Guadua patch of
42.3 ha. A square with that perimeter would have an
area of about 1,400 ha! This calculation gives an
impression of the high degree of irregularity and fragmentation of Guadua patches. The patch size distribution, produced from the mapped aerial photograph plots
(Fig. 3), shows that this biggest patch of 43.7 ha has the
character of an outlier. The vast majority of patch sizes
is 2 ha and less.
The eective area is calculated from the mapped
projected area by subtracting a strip at the outer edge of
each Guadua patch, where there are no culms. The mean
width of this strip was estimated 8.6 m from n = 230
eld measurements with a relative standard error of
SE% = 1.6; see Fig. 1 for illustration. Because of the
fragmented and elongated shape of the Guadua patches
this border strip covers a considerable area; it was estimated to be 31.1% of the total projected Guadua stand

450
400
350

Frequency

300
250
200
150
100
50
0
0

12 15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36 39 42
Guadua patch size [ha]

Fig. 3 Size distribution of Guadua patches

area! Eective area is then 2.7%, or, in absolute terms,

about 28,000 ha.
Stand characteristics estimated from sample plots
The mean number of culms per hectare was estimated to
be 6,940 (SE% = 6.8%), the breakdown to development classes is presented in Table 1. The major percentage of the culms (69%) is mature (commercial
culms). The regeneration, represented by the development classes shoots and young Guadua has a relatively
low share of 22.3%.
The diameter distribution was also estimated and is
depicted in Fig. 4 for each development class. Nearly
88.7% of the culms had dbh values between8 and 16 cm
and only 3% had larger diameters. This information is
of high value to the market, because it is the bigger
Guadua which is demanded and used for construction
purposes (Morales and Kleinn 2004; Garcia and Camargo 2004). Mean culm diameter was estimated to be
10.8 cm (SE% = 4.2%), the observations ranging from
4 to 20.5 cm, and the mean total culm length estimated
with the model of Arbelaez (1996) was 19.1 m.
Riano et al. (2002) made the observation, that the
mean diameter is smaller in stands where the number of
culms per hectare is higher (i.e. negative correlation
between number of culms and mean diameter). For the
Guadua stands inventoried in this study, however, we
did not observe that. Here, a correlation coecient of
r = 0.077 was estimated, which was not statistically
signicantly dierent from zero (P = 0.3797).
Apparent commercial volume along approach 1 (ten
mature culms yield 1 m3) was estimated to be 479 m3/ha
(SE% = 6.96%). Following Garc a (2004) (ten culms
yield 1.3 m3) the apparent volume was estimated to be
622 m3, the relative standard error being the same
(SE% = 6.96%). Analysis along approach 2 (see Table 2) produces an estimation of total apparent volume
of 654 m3/ha (SE% = 10.99%). In particular for these
estimations of apparent volume, however, it must be
emphasized that the relative standard error refers
exclusively to sampling. In this case, the model error (i.e.
the error caused by the fact that the target variable is not
measured but modelled) is likely to add another considerable error component so that the total error will be
higher to an unknown extent.
Total above ground commercial wood volume of
mature Guadua along the simple geometric model of a
tube with outer diameter dc is estimated to be 304 m3/ha.
Total wood volume of Guadua culms is estimated to be
465 m3/h where also young and dry Guadua are included. From this total wood volume, we obtain an
estimation of the above ground dry biomass of 311 ton/
ha and the above ground carbon stock of 156 ton/ha.
Additional information was gathered about species
composition of the tree component (dbh > 10 cm)
associated with the Guadua stands (see also Fig. 1,
right). On the cumulative area of all eld sample plots

366
Table 1 Development classes
Development class (denitions adapted from Londono 1998)

Relative frequency (SE% in parenthesis)

Shoots: From emergence of the new shoot until reaching its maximum height.
Culm protected by culm leaves, and without developing branches or foliage
Young Guadua:Loss of the culm leaves, development of intense green colour,
branches and foliage
Mature Guadua: The culm loses its bright green colour and turns into an
opaque green and then gradually to grey, as lichens, fungi and mosses
appear on the culms surface
Dry Guadua: The plants death phase. It is expressed by yellow colour
of the culm, and dryness of the middle section of the branches
Broken Guadua: Damaged culms which are not complete

3.7 (12.8)
18.6 (10.8)
69.0 (7.1)
6.4 (15.9)
2.3 (18.9)

Obs: these classes are those that are commonly used in Guadua management and operations in the Coee Region in Colombia. They are
based on directly observable attributes and are suitable for practical application. It is hardly possible to link these development classes
directly to age classes, because age is virtually impossible to determine

Discussion and conclusions

This Guadua inventory presents for the rst time sample-based statistical estimations of Guadua area and
growing stock in a study area within the Coee Region
of Colombia.
The crown projected and eective area were estimated to be 3.9 and 2.7% (in absolute terms 40,000 and
28,000 ha), respectively. Our gures are higher than
other gures published so far: from a preliminary map
compiled by the autonomous development corporations
(Corporaciones Autonomas Regionales), we determined
the area of Guadua stands for our study area with a
cover percent of 0.85% (Bernal 2002). This gure is
outside the 95% condence interval for the true cover
percent (cc%) from our study, which for the crown
projected area is 3.07% cc% 4.74% (t = 2). For
this statistical inference, we needed to consider the gure
from Bernal (2002) as constant because the standard
error was not known to us.
It is not uncommon in natural resources inventories
that results of dierent studies dier to some degree, as
illustrated, for example in Kleinn et al. (2002) for forest
area gures in Costa Rica. Various causes can be identied, such as dierent denitions and measurement
procedures, dierent information sources and dierent
inventory techniques. A sample-based statistical inventory, however, has the advantage that condence intervals can be estimated that provide an idea of the
precision of the estimations and allow comparisons on
statistical grounds. While this adds to the credibility of
our results, we cannot state with 100% certainty that our
results are closer to the true value than other gures.

This Guadua inventory, like most forest inventories

as well, turned out to be a complex task, with a series of
potential sources of errors in all project steps, which
make the true total error higher than the standard error
alone; the standard error which we specied in this study
for all point estimations marks the lower limit for this
true total error of estimation. The major potential
source of error here was probably the fact that the aerial
photographs were not up-to-date and not available for
all selected plots. We needed to apply 712 years old
photographs for budgetary reasons. Although experts
conrm that the changes in Guadua stands during that
period were probably not signicant, it is always preferable to use recent remote sensing imagery. We attempted to compensate for the age of the aerial
photographs by applying a sample-based calibration
factor from eld verications.
Field sample size was relatively small, again for
budgetary reasons. However, by the integration of aerial
photo plots, relatively good precision was achieved.
Aerial photographs were available for 89 out of a selected set of 103 rst-stage sample plots; the remaining
14 needed to be considered as non-response where we
assumed that their characteristics did not dier signicantly from those of the assessed sample plots.

60%
50%
Abundance (%)

(1.3 ha), 25 dierent botanical tree families and 61 tree

species were found with a mean number of 178 trees per
hectare (SE% = 9.9%), 5.5 m2 basal area per hectare
(SE% = 20.9%) and a wood volume of 78.9 m3/ha
(SE% = 24.6%). Most of the tree species (70%) belonged to species not commercially utilized for timber.
The ndings about tree species diversity were similar to
the ones reported by Ospina (2001).

40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
4-8

Shoots

8-12
12-16
16-20
Diameter Classes (Dbh) (cm)
Young

Mature

Dry

>=20

Total

Fig. 4 Diameter distribution broken down to development classes

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Table 2 Approximations to apparent volume, wood volume, biomass and carbon content
Development
class

Shoots
Young
Mature
Dry
Broken
Total

N/ha

258
1,290
4,785
445
162
6,940

Relative
frequency (%)

3.7
18.6
69.0
6.4
2.3
100.00

Commercial

Total

Apparent
volume (m3/ha)

Wood
volume (m3/ha)

Apparent
volume (m3/ha)

Wood
volume (m3/ha)

Dry biomass
(ton/ha)

Carbon
(ton/ha)

654.0

654.0

304.0

304.0

223.0
729.0
56.0

1,008.0

99.0
339.0
27.0

465.0

66.0
227.0
18.0

311.0

33.0
113.5
9.0

155.5

See text (Methods section) for denition of commercial and total

Many trees are found interspersed in Guadua stands.

These trees serve many ecological functions, such as
providing food source for wildlife. Most of the tree
species found were non-commercial. If interest is in
combining wood production of both trees and bamboo,
research will be required towards the selection of suitable species and suitable silvicultural treatments.
Looking at the estimated composition of the Guadua
stands, a relatively small percentage of regeneration
(shoots and young Guadua) is found, only 22.3% of the
culms belong to the corresponding development classes.
Among the reasons for this situation may be what Arango (2002) writes, that cattle moving into and through
the Guadua stands trample down parts of the regeneration as most of the Guadua stands are adjacent to
pastures. In this context, if we follow the observation of
Londono (1998) and CVC (2000), that there should be
about 40% in the development classes shoots and
young Guadua to guarantee sustainability of harvesting; we would conclude that, on the average, sustainability of the regeneration of the Guadua stands in
the study area is not guaranteed. However, in our
opinion, the assessment of the sustainability of Guadua
stand managementwhich is such a complex and still
not a perfectly understood mattershould be done by
more than just the one attribute percentage of shoots
and young Guadua. The number of shoots per hectare
varies considerably and does also show seasonal
dynamics. The sustainability issue is certainly another
important future research topic for the management of
Guadua stands.
From this inventory, we could not conrm what
Riano et al. (2002) stated, that number of culms per
hectare and mean diameter are negatively correlated. In
our case, there was no signicant correlation between
these variables. Probably, mean diameter is determined
by a more complex set of factors and their interactions,
where stand variables (such as number of culms) are but
one set of variables, together with site and genetics
variables. This is certainly an important topic for the
management of Guadua stands and worth forfuture
research.
Our biomass values are higher than those reported
for many other bamboo species (Hunter and Junqui
2002); however, their comparative study refers to bam-

boo plantations while our inventory covered almost

exclusively natural stands; and, Guadua is a bamboo
species that grows to bigger dimensions than many other
bamboo species. Estimation of volume and biomass was
a challenge, because we found that there is still a lack of
availability of basic mensurational models for predicting
apparent volume, wood volume, biomass, and carbon.
This is also true for other bamboo species as Hunter and
Junqui (2002) state: more, simple biomass determinations are needed. Our approximations are based on the
conventional approach used in Colombia, and on a
simple geometric approach, where the results for
apparent
commercial
volume
dier
considerablybetween 479 and 654 m3indicating the uncertainty which is implicit in Guadua volume estimations.
The volume and biomass gures must be taken as
approximations, where we needed to use various model
assumptions: on culm length, on horizontal (circular
cross-section) and vertical culm shape (degree of conicity) and on wall thickness. These models are all backed
by published studies, but they are at the same time
sources of variability in addition to the specied standard error.
These manifold sources of variability point to the fact
that comprehensive research is needed to ll the gap in
knowledge about the basic mensurational characteristics
and relationships of Guadua culms and Guadua stands.
Attributes like volume and biomass are maybe currently
not so crucial for marketing of Guadua when utilization
is mainly for construction, furniture and handicraft;
there, number of culms and culm lengthas currently
usedare sucient for the assessment of growing stock.
However, we need volume and biomass estimations,
when we want to research into biomass productivity and
carbon sequestration.
Altogether, this inventory exercise produced information of high interest for the Guadua development and
management in the Coee Region of Colombia. The
methodological framework may be recommended for
similar bamboo assessments in other regions.
Acknowledgements Parts of the results presented here were produced in the Guadua Bamboo Project, which had been funded
20012004 by the European Union (Contract No. ICA4-200010209), with project partners from Colombia (Universidad Tecnologica de Pereira), Costa Rica (UCR and CATIE), Germany

368
(Universitat Freiburg), and the United Kingdom (Imperial College
of Science). The nancial support to the second author is highly
appreciated. Special and particular thanks are due to our colleague
and friend Dr Juan Carlos Camargo, professor at the Faculty of
Environmental Sciences at the Technical University of Pereira,
Colombia, for his continuing support and suggestions, to Dr Michael Tistl, principal advisor in a German technical cooperation
project at that University, and to Dr Ximena Londono, president
of the Colombian Bamboo Society. An inventory is a study in
which many people participate to all of whom we extend our
thanks. Our particular thanks for assistance in dierent elds are
due to Marco Antonio Chavez, Gustavo Cardona, Gabriel Jaime
Aranjo and the eld teams, Diego Rubiano, Jhon Mario Rodr guez, Lidieth Mar n, Lorena Orozco, Juan Carlos Ram rez and
Victor Madrigal. We are indebted to Prof. Walter Liese, for his
valuable suggestions on this manuscript and his continued advises
to our Guadua related projects. The observations of an anonymous
reviewer helped improving the manuscript and are highly appreciated.

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