Forest land
Forest land is a broad land use class defined in the Swedish Forestry Act. The definition the same as the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) definition of Forest Land and is internationally accepted.
Forest land is defined as land with trees higher than 5 meter and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds in situ.
Of the total growing stock of 3547 miljoner m³sk approximately 40% is pine and 39% spruce. Today there is ca 27.9 million hectare of Forest land.
The age distribution within Sweden's forests show that the most common age group is 41-60 years. Many species are connected to old forest and the there are circa 3.6 million hectares of forest older than 140 years which represents ca 12.9 percent of the forest land area. This type of forest is most common in Norrland where is a a significant proportion of the forest land area (ca 19% i northern Norrland and ca 15% in southern Norrland). In southern Sweden there is little forest land with an age over 140 years.
The volume of dead wood in forest land areas is an established measure of the level of biological diversity. Many species are dependant on dead wood in different stages of decay and the lack of dead wood is one of the primary threats to many endangerd species in the forest landscape. Seen for the whole country the volume of dead wood is 280 million m³ or 10 m³ per hectare. Roughly half of this dead wood is classified as hard dead wood and the rest in different stages of decomposition.
The total tree dry biomass, a key value in climate issues, is 2649 million tonnes dry weight for forest land in Sweden.
Below are links to pre-filtered views. Explore the tables by clicking on the table name. You can then select new time periods, geographic areas, etc., by clicking on "Choose variable." The statistics can be downloaded in various formats and are also available via API.