Peat map of the forest land
Metadata
When publishing, the source must be stated: Peat map, Department of Forest Ecology and Management, SLU or in English Source: Peatmap, Dept. of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
For scientific citations:
Ågren, A. M., Hasselquist, E. M., Stendahl, J., Nilsson, M. B., and Paul, S. S. (2022) Delineating the distribution of mineral and peat soils at the landscape scale in northern boreal regions, SOIL, 8, 1-17, https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-8-733-2022.
The continuous peat map should only be used to illustrate the horizontal distribution of peat as the uncertainties in peat depth are large (± 19 cm).
The map (both products) is produced for the whole landscape, but since it is trained on data from forest land, the results are not quality assessed for other types of land.
The maps are available in National Forest Data Lab’s map portal and in the Swedish Forest Agency map service and their mobile web app. All in Swedish. For the services from the Swedish Forest Agency, select " Val av karta", " Skoglig grunddata - mark" and finally " Torvkarta".
Peat map of the forest land contains data on the distribution of mineral soils, peatlands and water. The peat map consists of two products, a classified map and a continuous map. The continuous peat map shows the thickness of the organic layer (6–88 cm). The classified map shows mineral soil, ≥ 30 cm peat depth, ≥ 40 cm peat depth, ≥ 50 cm peat depth, and water.
Previous maps have underestimated the proportion of peatlands in Sweden. The topographic map's wetlands identify about 50% of peatlands, while the soil map identifies about 70% of peatlands. The classified peat map identifies about 80% of peatlands.
The peatland map can facilitate the identification of suitable sites for wetland restoration and be used in forestry planning, including off-road driving, as peatlands are often softer and more susceptible to driving damage than mineral soils.
The peat map is based on nearly 5 500 measurements of the thickness of the organic layer measured in the national soil inventory conducted by SLU on behalf of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, as well as SLU's soil moisture maps, which in turn are based on geodata from SGU, SMHI and Lantmäteriet, for example high-resolution elevation data (LIDAR scanning).
The basic format is raster data with a resolution of 2×2 metres in the SWEREF99TM projection.
Download data
- The maps can be downloaded from SLU.
- The maps are also available through the National Forest Data Lab's services (REST and WMS). More information: Here are the maps.