Formally protected forest land refers to forest land that is protected through various instruments, governed by laws and other regulations on forestry. Formally protected forest land includes areas within national parks, nature reserves, habitat protection areas, nature conservation agreements and Natura 2000 with designated forest habitats. Nature reserves and habitat protection areas that have been decided on but do not yet apply are also included. Furthermore, land compensations for future nature reserves are included, as well as areas under an agreement between Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the Swedish Fortifications Agency.

Voluntary set-asides refers to smaller areas of productive forest land for which the land owner has voluntarily made a decision not to carry out measures that can damage natural values, the cultural environment or social values. These areas must be documented in a management plan or similar.

Consideration patches refers to smaller areas of productive forest land that have been designated for rejuvenation harvesting, voluntarily by the land owner or pursuant to the Forestry Act.

Unproductive forest land refers to forest land that, on average, cannot produce more than one cubic metre of wood per hectare and year. Examples of unproductive forest land are trees on wet lands and mountainous impediments, as well as large parts of the mountain birch forest.

The four types differ with regard to

1. legal aspects, content and duration;
2. methods for collecting input data;
3. the possibility of reducing overlapping areas between the different types; and
4. the quality and resolution in data registers.

These statistics are not valued in relation to national or international goals and are therefore not summed here.