IFER – Institute of Forest Ecosystem Research, Ltd., is an independent, private, research organization. Core activities of the company are focused primarily on forest production ecology, monitoring of forest health condition, methods of statistical forest inventory, forest management planning, wildlife ecology, balance of carbon and other substances in ecosystems, etc. IFER is capable of independent work at research tasks in these fields on the basis of current assignments of customers from amongst the Czech and foreign forest owners and managers, ministries, state administration and self-governments, European Union or other international organizations and institutions. IFER is functioning with no basic budget or institutional contribution; its existence depends exclusively on the receipts from individual projects.
The history of the Institute of Forest Ecosystem Research dates back to the beginning of year 1992 when a group of four colleagues made a decision to leave the Research Institute of Forest and Game Management (VÚLHM Jíloviště-Strnady) and to start independent work. In 1994, the group founded a limited company IFER s.r.o. and in 1996, the company’s seat was moved to Jílové u Prahy.
During its existence, IFER gained a lot of theoretical knowledge as well as practical experience which facilitate a long-term development of the methodology of statistical forest inventory and a closely linked complex technology of computeraided collection and processing of field data – Field-Map. The development and subsequent trading with the Field-Map technology was assigned to a spinoff limited company IFER – Monitoring and Mapping Solutions, Ltd. founded for the purpose in 2005.