Forest area and standing timber
1. Contact
Responsible agency
Unit
Contact person
Position
Email (agency)
Phone
2. Statistical presentation
Data description
Statistics for the total forest area and forest cover, for the structure of forest land in breakdown by category (forest, swamp, glade, etc.), for the forest area and standing timber in breakdown by main tree species, form of ownership, growing conditions, as well as for the structure of forest stands in breakdown by age class.
Statistical concepts and definitions
Statistical unit
Forest areas in all forests, irrespective of the type of ownership and tree species.
Statistical population
Geographical coverage - territory of the Republic of Latvia.
3. Institutional mandate
Legal acts and other agreements
Cabinet Regulations No 51 Regulations on Monitoring of Forest Resources of 18 January 2022.
4. Accessibility and clarity
On-line database
5. Comparability
Comparability - geographical
Eurostat (statistical office of the European Union) is responsible for publishing high-quality Europe-wide statistics and indicators that enable comparisons between countries and regions. Statistics for forest area in EU countries is available in the https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database, in section Agriculture, forestry and fisheries / Forestry / Forest resources / Area of wooded land (source: FAO - FE).
Until 2008 the data were acquired from forest inventories carried out by the State Forest Service, while starting from 2009 from the monitoring of forest resources.
Based on the national definition, forest includes:
- forest stand, defoliated stand, burning, windfall, cleaning.
Based on the international definition, forest includes:
- forest stand, defoliated stand, burning, windfall, cleaning, glade, and land under forest infrastructure objects.
Length of comparable time series
Data on forest land and standing timber in breakdown by form of ownership (state and private forests) are available since 1994, however it should be noted that there is a significant break in the time series. Until 2008 (including) the data were acquired from forest inventories carried out by the State Forest Service, while starting from 2009 from the monitoring of forest resources (situation on 1 January of the running year).
In the rest of the tables, comparable data are available for the period starting from 2014.
6. Coherence
Coherence- cross domain
N/A
7. Statistical processing (data source etc.)
Source data
The monitoring of forest resources conducted by Latvian State Forest Research Institute Silava.
Data collection
Monitoring of forest resources is carried out by building a network of plots and selecting tracks with four plots in each. The tracts are distributed evenly throughout the whole country.
Data compilation
Repeated measurements show changes over a five-year period. Annual indicators are produced by dividing the total change during the re-measurement period by the number of years in it.
Monitoring is carried out based on the Methodology of National Forest Monitoring developed by Latvian State Forest Research Institute Silava.