The Swedish Forest Agency (SFA) has carried out an aerial inventory of the damage storm Per caused in January and has discovered that as much as 16 million m3 of forest may have been blown down, four million m3 more than originally thought.
More than two-thirds of these areas with fallen timber cover 50m3, making them difficult to recover and ideal breeding grounds for spruce bark beetle, according to the agency.
Johanna Form, from SFA, said that this made the timetable for processing the remaining felled timber tighter than first thought and she has called on forest owners to concentrate on processing storm felled spruce rather than felling standing stands.
