Skogsstatistisk årsbok 2003.pdf - Skogsstyrelsen

SUMMARY5 Nature and environmentApproximately 10 percent of Sweden’s land is protected by some kind of nature conservationlegislation. Nature reserves account for three quarters of the protected land. Most of this landis in Northern Sweden.The Forestry Act protects roughly 3.5 percent of forest land from forestry activities.The volume of dead wood on forest land; sub-alpine coniferous woodland; and waste land is160 million m 3 sk. Dead wood in protected areas is not included in this figure. Five to sevenyears after felling the dead wood average is 4.1 m 3 per hectare.The carbon stock in tree biomass is approximately 752 million metric tons.There are 4,120 red-listed species in Sweden. About half of them are found in forests.Ninety-five percent of the stands are made up of solitary species, such as: pine, spruce or abroadleaf species. This data is valid for forests with an average height exceeding seven meters.Mapping of woodland key habitats has so far discovered 45,000 areas in the small scaleforestry. This equals a total area of 137,000 hectares.The hunting season 2001–2002 saw the felling of 105,000 moose, 154,000 roe deer and103,000 hares.Over 10 million hectares are FSC-certified and two million hectares are certified inaccordance with PEFC-standards.Forests are utilised for reasons other than woodproduction. This chapter briefly reviewsmultifunctional forest use and presents environmentalstatistics relevant to forest and forest land.The responsibility for nature protection onwoodland is shared between the SwedishEnvironmental Protection Agency and the NationalBoard of Forestry.Red-listed species are categorised according toThe World Conservation Union (IUCN) criteria.The categories are: RE – Regionally extinct; CR –Critically endangered; EN – Endangered; VU –Vulnerable; NT – Near threatened; and DD –Data deficient. About fifty percent of the redlistedspecies are found in forests (tables 5.6, 5.7and 5.8). Data on red-listed species are collectedand published by the Swedish Threatened SpeciesUnit.Nature conservation criteria relevant to forestsare described in this chapter. These include: treeswith large diameters; the presence of dead wood;old growth forest; and forests with a high portionof broad-leaved trees (figures 5.1 to 5.4, and table5.5). Positive results indicate high levels of diversityon woodland. Information on monoculturewoodlands is also available (table 5.13) and largesingle species forests indicate low biologicaldiversity. Most data is from the National ForestInventory.Certification of forestry is a market drivenprocess that is increasing in popularity. Two typesof standards are used: environmental managementsystems or level standards. Examples ofenvironmental management systems used inSweden are EMAS and ISO14001. The SwedishFSC-standard (Forest Stewardship Council) andthe Swedish PEFC-standard (Pan European ForestCertification) are examples of level standards.According to an inventory of wetland forests,Sweden has 1.3 million hectares of swamp forest(table 5.16). Since 1993 a mapping of woodlandkey habitats has been going on (figure 5.8, andtables 5.14 and 5.15). A woodland key habitat isa habitat where you can find, or expect to find,red-listed species.Statistics on the number of felled game are alsopresented (table 5.17).Emission and deposition of pollutants has a301