Mapping of intact forest landscapes in Sweden according to Global forest watch methodology

Currently, most of the world’s forests are directly or indirectly affected by some kind of \nhuman activity. More people are getting concerned with the state of tropical forests. \nHowever, the international community has not tracked the rate and extent of ecological \nchange in forests of the boreal zone, which is the largest biome in the world and \ncomprise one-third of the world's forest area. Although European temperate forests \nwere transformed centuries ago, there are still some large areas of forest in a relatively \nnatural state left in boreal regions of Russia, Canada, Finland and Sweden. Five years \nago, a team of Russian experts associated with non-governmental environmental \norganisations started to create new maps of Europe's last remaining wilderness forests, \nusing high-resolution satellite images in combination with GIS, existing topographical \nmaps and field work. The result of their effort, “The Last Intact Forest Landscapes of \nNorthern European Russia”, was released by the World Resources Institute's Global \nForest Watch (GFW) project and Greenpeace Russia in October 2001. The maps were \ncreated also for the rest of Russia and the “Atlas of Russia’s Intact Forest Landscapes” \nwas released early in 2002. \n The project “Mapping of Intact Forest Landscapes in Sweden” was initiated by GFW in \nMay 2002. The GFW Pan-Boreal Mapping Initiative originated as an idea to extend the \nunique Atlas of Russia’s Intact Forest Landscapes (Aksenov et al. 2002) over the \nWorld’s entire boreal zone. A number of non-governmental organizations and academic \ninstitutions in five countries (Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Canada) were \ninvolved in creating a map of “Remaining Wildlands in the Northern Forests” as the first \nresult of their cooperation. The map was presented as a poster at the Johannesburg \nSummit 2002 (26th August - 4th September 2002). \n This MSc thesis describes the background context of mapping undisturbed forests in \nSweden, as well as the criteria and methods set by the initiating GFW project. Swedish \nforest conditions are partially covered in the Literature survey chapter, where the \nhistory of forest management and the natural characteristics of northern boreal forests \nare characterised. Previous works about mapping virgin forests in Sweden and related \nstudies dealing with remotely sensed data are mentioned. The essence of the study \nfocuses on the detailed description of the methodology (GIS in combination with the \ninterpretation of satellite data) and the material used to create the map of intact forest \nlandscapes in Sweden. Further, the comparison with other existing old-growth \ninventories can be found in the Discussion part, where also the significance of the \noutput and the applicability of the Russian criteria to the Swedish vegetation conditions \nare evaluated. \n

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