Sweden’s Growing Wood Basket Sweden’s subarctic forest range is
setting records. A research team consisting of six Swedish
scientists has found that over roughly the past 15 years, forest
density and the average tree-line height in the region has
increased by 19 percent. In addition, a new survey of shrub,
tree and vegetation data on 549 plots in 61 forest clusters
originally collected and analyzed in 1997 was performed by the
team using in-field testing and remote sensing, revealing that
over the past 43 years, “tree biomass has doubled.” According to
the team, “tree basal area and biomass increased by 19 percent
between 1997 and 2010 with the main increase occurring in
established birch forest.” The results concur with the results
of other studies that suggest that there has been a general
increase in cover and biomass of trees and shrubs in subarctic
and Arctic areas. Those studies were performed in 2001, 2006,
2007, two in 2010 and another in 2011. So what does all this
mean? According the research team,