The maps – available on the website treespecies.se – provide new insights into Sweden’s forests and can be used to track how they change over time, and how both long-term climate change and individual events, such as forest fires, affect and are affected by the forest. This, in turn, provides a better basis for decision-making on forestry, biodiversity and climate.
“Before I started, there was no large-scale, classified map of tree species in Sweden. Satellites observe the Earth continuously, year after year and season after season, and I use data from them to create a model that can predict the occurrence of certain tree species,” says Abdulhakim Abdi, a physical geographer at Lund University.
Götaland in Focus
The findings enhance our understanding of which trees grow where, whilst also demonstrating a new method for monitoring changes over time. This is important for understanding how climate change affects the forest. Traditional forest inventories provide high-quality information, but are based on individual sample plots and therefore cannot show the entire landscape. The focus of Abdulhakim Abdi’s research is Götaland, and this is also the part of Sweden where the variation in tree species is greatest.
– In northern Sweden, the landscape is very monotonous: spruce, pine and birch. Southern Sweden, on the other hand, and Skåne in particular, looks quite different, with greater variety and more species such as oak and beech, he says.
The maps are now ready for use and the data is freely available. Abdulhakim Abdi envisages a wide range of users: the forestry sector, nature conservation organisations, private forest owners and landowners – or anyone who needs a clearer picture of how the forest is distributed across the landscape.
“For example, knowing where certain tree species are most common can help us identify habitats for wildlife, monitor how forests respond to disturbances such as storms or droughts, and support reporting in connection with EU environmental policy,” says Abdulhakim Abdi.
A research article on the mapping project has previously been published in the International Journal of Remote Sensing: ”Mapping forest tree species and their uncertainty using Earth observation and National Forest Inventory data: towards operational monitoring in Sweden”