Availability and mobilization of forest resources in Sweden

Abstract

The available amount of wood supply is essential for national strategic planning and evaluation of forestry in Sweden. Since Sweden holds a large part of the forests in the European Union and plays a significant role in the global trade of wood-based products, a precise estimate of the potential of the Swedish forest resource is also important in regional and global outlook studies. In this study, we analyse factors influencing the availability and mobilization of wood supply. By comparing data from the Swedish National Forest Inventory with the stand registers of the five largest forest owners in Sweden, we estimate the productive forest area not included in the forest owners' stand databases. Our results show that 0.4 million hectares, or 5% of these large-scale forest owners productive forest area, is outside their stand registers and therefore neither included in their long-term harvesting plans nor in their nature conservation plans. For small-scale forest owners, we analyse the final felling rate during 2004–2020 using satellite imagery to estimate the proportion of properties that abstain from final fellings and thereby could affect the potential mobilization of wood supply. During this period, 32% of the forest properties owned by small-scale forest owners have not done any final felling. These forest estates hold in total 1.1 million hectares of productive forest land or 9% of the area owned by small-scale forest owners. This implies a gap between the potential and realistic estimates for Forest Available for Wood Supply.