Spruce bark beetle
Spruce bark beetle attacks on healthy spruce forests have sharply increased in southern Sweden. As part of the NRS project, SLU has surveyed beetle damage in Götaland and Svealand each autumn from 2020 to 2024 on behalf of the Swedish Forest Agency.
Severe damage has caused significant concern about further subsequent insect-related problems within the forestry sector.
The extremely warm and dry summer of 2018 resulted in many drought-stressed spruces, which favored the spruce bark beetle. The large number of weakened trees led to unusually high breeding success, even in living standing spruce. In recent years, spruce bark beetle populations have caused extensive damage to spruce forests in Götaland and Svealand.
Results from the 2024 survey show that the damage has decreased sharply and now amounts to 362,000 m³sk, a reduction of 95 percent compared with the peak year 2021.
Currently, the older dataset is being transferred to SND (the Swedish National Data Service).