New official statistics from the Swedish National Forestry Inventory

Since the 1980's standing volume has increased by 26% in final felling forests and 7% in thinning stage forests. Of note is an increase of 56% in plant and young forests whcih is mainly due to more stems being left during final felling.

- From a forestry perspective it positive that we have more timber rich forests, explains Per Nilsson, Head of Analysis at the Swedish National Forest Inventory. - It is also satisfying that raised environmental awareness is starting to be seen in the data.

In order to have an increase in standing volume the forests growth must be higher than the total drain, that is to say fellings plus natural drain. The gap between growth and drain has decreased slightly during the last few years and is currently cirka 10 million cubic meters per year for productive forest land. The primary reasons for this is increased felling and the effects of the storms Gudrun and Per. This has meant that the trend of increasing stadning volume has not been as strong in th last 10 years as it has been in the decades up to the year 2000.

Less Bilberry and Reindeer lichen and more Glittering wood-moss
The themed analysis chapter in the this years SKOGSDATA is about field and bottom layer vegetation in Swedish forests. Detailed data from the Swedish National Forest Inventory can be used to describe both status and change during the last 20 years for many different plants in the forest landsape.

- The reduction seen in bilberry plants has occured in the north of sweden, where as reindeer lichen has decreased mainly in mature forest in northern Norrland and older forest in Svealand, explains Jonas Dahlgren analysist at the Swedish National Forest Inventory. Glittering wood-moss has shown an increase in younger and mature age forests over the whole country. Jonas Dahlgren stresses that further analyis is necessary in order to explain the factors behind to these changes.