Grassland Inventory

The NILS Grassland Inventory provides a comprehensive national overview of Sweden’s grasslands, with a focus on habitats of high conservation value. The inventory enables assessments of the extent and quality of these habitats.

Sampling design

To enable the inventory of both common and less common habitat types within the same framework, a common sampling design has been developed for the NILS inventories of alpine areas, grasslands, seashores, and deciduous forests.

Aerial image surveys

Through aerial image interpretation, sample blocks and plots outside the target habitat types can be identified. These do not then need to be surveyed in the field, allowing fieldwork to focus on areas that potentially contain the target habitat types.

Methods in the field

Following the aerial image interpretation, a number of randomly selected sample plots are surveyed in the field. Since many areas contain both deciduous forests and grasslands, joint field inventories create synergies and improve the efficiency of the survey.