Natural and cultural continuous cover forests in Sweden : how much remain and how are they managed?

Sammanfattning: Swedish forestry has a long and successful history of developing sustained production of wood. Consequently silviculture is dominated by clear-felling approaches, despite the fact that Swedish forests are ecologically and culturally diverse. A considerable proportion of our naturally dynamic forests were Continuous Cover Forests (CCF). CCFs were also a part of the pre-industrial cultural landscape. Both the natural and the cultural landscape CCFs are today threatened and their area extent does not satisfy the new dimensions of sustainable forest management as biodiversity conservation and socio-cultural values. In this study I estimate the past and present amount of two natural and one cultural CCF types in two study areas using several different approaches at two different spatial scales. The results are compared with the silvicultural practices in the two areas located around two important biophysical and socio-cultural transition zones in northwest and south-central Sweden. My results show that in our present landscape 9 to 10% of our forested land is potential wet and dry CCF sites. In addition to this there is a portion of high altitude CCF with moist oceanic climate in the Scandinavian Mountains. However, of all potential CCF sites in the southern study area only 0 to 6% remains. In the northern study area the proportion left was slightly higher at 0 to 17% of the potential, except for the high altitude CCF where the decline was less. It is clear that this difference between the study areas is due to the later arrival of the timber frontier in the north. Present management practices on different site types indicates that the situation will be the same as in the south in a few decades since Swedish forest management exercises limited consideration in different site types to maintain CCFs. To match the natural diversity of forests and to satisfy all three dimensions of sustainable forest management there is a clear need for developing alternative forest management methods in Sweden.