Exploring the diversity of non-industrial private forest properties in Southern Sweden.

Diverse forest landscapes contribute to reaching various forest policy goals. Understanding how the diversity of forests in a landscape is distributed among forest properties and how it is related to biogeographical and ownership factors can be helpful for effective policy implementation. We created a forest characteristics-based typology of non-industrial private forest properties aiming to capture the between-property forest diversity in a municipality in southern Sweden, and studied how it was related to owner age and gender, landscape position, and storm damage. Using public data of forests and latent profile analysis, we detected five clusters of properties. Four clusters differed mainly by age structure and species composition. One of them was clearly marked by a high proportion of young mixed forest following severe storm damage >15 years prior. The fifth cluster was marked by a greater occurrence of nature conservation agreements and conservation value forests. Conifer-dominated properties were larger than broadleaf-dominated properties. Owner age only slightly differed between clusters, being higher for properties characterized by a prevalence of older coniferous or by noble broadleaved forests and nature conservation. Properties in the latter cluster were more often owned by women and located close to lakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]