Formally protected forest land, voluntary set-asides, consideration patches and unproductive forest land 2021
New formally protected forest land amounted to 22 000 hectares
Statistical news from Statistics Sweden 2022-06-30 8.00
In 2021, formally protected forest land increased by 21 600 hectares, 16 400 hectares of which is productive forest land. This corresponds to almost 0.1 percent of all forest land in Sweden. Voluntary set-asides have remained relatively unchanged since 2020.
Statistics Sweden presents statistics on four different types of forest land: formally protected forest land, voluntary set-asides, consideration patches for regeneration felling, and unproductive forest land. These statistics are produced in a collaboration between Statistics Sweden, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the Swedish Forest Agency, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
At the end of 2021, formally protected forest land amounted to almost 2.4 million hectares, which corresponds to just under 9 percent of Sweden’s total forest land. Of the formally protected forest land, 1.3 million hectares consists of productive forest land, which corresponds to almost 6 percent of Sweden’s total area of productive forest land. Voluntary set-asides amounted to 1.3 million hectares, which corresponds to almost 6 percent of Sweden’s area of productive forest land and just under 5 percent of the total area of forest land.
A preliminary estimate of consideration patches for regeneration felling amounted to an area of almost 0.5 million hectares in 2021, which corresponds to about 2 percent of Sweden’s total area of productive forest land. Sweden’s total area of unproductive forest land amounted to 4.4 million hectares, although large parts are overlapped by formal protection. Unproductive forest land without formal protection amounts to 3 million hectares, or 11 percent of Sweden’s total area of forest land.
Areas in hectares, without overlapping areas | Share of Sweden’s total forest land | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Forms | Productive forest land | Total forest land | Productive forest land | Total forest land | |
Formally protected forest land | 1 327 600 | 2 369 800 | 5.8% | 8.8% | |
Voluntary set-asides | 1 307 000 | 1 307 000 | 5.6% | 4.7% | |
Consideration patches | 497 200 | 497 200 | 2.1% | 1.8% | |
Unproductive forest land | 0 | 3 097 800 | 0.0% | 11.1% |
Source: Statistics Sweden, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the Swedish Forest Agency and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Areas are rounded to even 100s.
Source: Statistics Sweden, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the Swedish Forest Agency, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences National Forest Inventory. The size of the circles shows the actual proportions. The percentages in the figure should not be added together due to methodological and legal differences between the parts.
Source: Statistics Sweden, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the Swedish Forest Agency, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences National Forest Inventory. The size of the circles shows the actual proportions. The percentages in the figure should not be added together due to methodological and legal differences between the parts.
Half of the forest land in the subalpine region is formally protected
Sweden’s subalpine region extends across 4 out of Sweden’s 21 counties: Dalarna, Jämtland, Västerbotten, and Norrbotten. At the end of 2021, 564 000 hectares of productive forest land in the subalpine region were formally protected. This corresponds to 50.7 percent of all productive forest land in the region. Outside the subalpine region, 763 000 hectares of productive forest land was formally protected, which corresponds to 3.5 percent of the total area of productive forest land outside the subalpine region.
In total, 1.4 million hectares of subalpine forest land was formally protected. This corresponds to 57 percent of the total forest land area in the subalpine region. In the rest of the country, 923 000 hectares were formally protected, or 3.8 percent of the total forest land area.
Source: Swedish register on areas protected by the Environmental Code (NVR) and Swedish data on land cover mapping (NMD 1.1). Without overlapping areas.
Definitions and explanations
Forest land
Under the Forestry Act (1979:429), forest land is defined as a coherent area in which trees are higher than five metres and the crown cover is more than ten percent or there are conditions to attain this height and crown cover without production-enhancing measures.
Productive forest land
Under the Forestry Act, productive forest land is defined as forest land that, according to generally accepted criteria, can produce on average at least one cubic metre of wood per hectare and year.
Types of forest land
The four subsets included in the statistics are called “types” here. They are described in the government assignment (N2018/04159/SK) as the subsets on which these statistics are to be distributed. The types are:
- formally protected forest land,
- voluntary set-asides,
- consideration patches for regeneration felling, and
- unproductive forest land.
Formally protected forest land
Forest land regulated by laws and ordinances, as well as agreements entered into and individual decisions. In these statistics, it is a collective term for various instruments for the protection of forest land. These are present in both productive and on unproductive forest land. The instruments included in the statistics are:
- National parks
- Nature reserves with regulations against forestry
- Habitat protection areas
- Natura 2000 with designated forest habitats
- Nature conservation agreements, including “ekoparker” (nature reserves) and the White-Backed Woodpecker Action Plan
- Agreement between government agencies between the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the Swedish Fortifications Agency
- Habitat protection areas and nature reserves for which the decision is not final and binding
- Land compensation for the establishment of nature reserves.
Voluntary set-asides
Areas of productive forest land on which landowners voluntarily decided not to carry out any measures that can harm natural values, cultural environments, or social values.
Consideration patches
Small areas of productive forest land that have been made available, voluntarily, or pursuant to the Swedish Forest Care Act, for regeneration felling. The areas are preliminary estimates based on the most recent definitive five-year average value in 2016/2017.
Unproductive forest land
Forest land that, according to generally accepted criteria, is not able to produce on average at least one cubic metre of wood per hectare and year. Examples of unproductive forest land include subalpine birch forests, tree- or shrub-covered mires, and sparsely wooded rocky land areas.
The subalpine region
The map shows five Swedish geographical regions that are used in the statistics, with the subalpine region in a light colour in the north-western part of Sweden. The other four regions are defined as the land below the subalpine region.
Source: Swedish Forest Agency, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Statistics Sweden
Changes over time
Values for consideration patches and voluntary set-asides have been revised continuously due to continuous quality increase in method and input data. In conjunction with the publication of the 2021 values, new values for the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 are also reported.
Publication
A more detailed report of this survey is published in the Statistical Report:
Next publishing will be
The next statistical news in this series will be published in 2023.
Statistical Database
More information is available in the Statistical Database
Feel free to use the facts from this statistical news but remember to state Source: Statistics Sweden.