Forest inventory in Georgia is undergoing extensive changes in design, field practices and applied technology. The new annual inventory monitoring  system is a radical advancement over the previous periodic inventory systems. The implementation of the new system requires many adjustments in the monitoring practices and high expectations of more timely and accurate inventory estimates. At the same time, rapidly changing technology and the availability of remotely sensed data offer new opportunities to enhance the inventory and its applications. Some of the opportunities include more accurate area estimates and improved forest type stratification, more timely detection of land use changes and facilitated identification of impending catastrophic events such as disease infestation. Furthermore, as the resolution of remotely sensed data increases, other opportunities may became feasible for monitoring population densities and quantifying partial removals, methods that at present are considered infeasible with these data. Such enhancements may eventually lead to a replacement of some ground measurements and free funding that could be applied to a spatially more intensive sampling design using remotely sensed data. This would ultimately lead to further increases in timely and more accurate inventory estimates.