Abstract

About 70 million m(3) was damaged by the storm Gudrun that hit southern Sweden in January 2005, i.e. almost as much as the normal annual cut for the whole country. To establish any differences in forest state and forest management before and after the storm, measures such as growing stock, annual growth, age-class distribution, choice of species in regeneration and cleaning and thinning activities were studied for the area affected and the area unaffected by the storm. For all analyses, sample plots from the Swedish National Forest Inventory were used. Results based on mean values for the periods 2000-2004/2006-2010/2012-2016 showed that the total growing stock for the damaged area decreased significantly by similar to 30 million m(3) directly after the storm but has now recovered to the same level as before the storm. Therefore, it seems clear that forest owners and forest managers made rational choices when aiming to restore the forest area. As expected, the annually cleaned area and the area in immediate need of cleaning increased significantly in the Gudrun area after the storm. No other significant changes in behaviour to reduce future storm damage risk could be detected.

Published in

Forestry
2019, Volume: 92, number: 4, pages: 481-489

SLU Authors

• Valinger, Erik

  • Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Kempe, Göran

  • Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Fridman, Jonas

  • Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/forestry/cpz005

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/98662