Norske verneområder: kulturpåvirkning, avskoging og gjengroing

Abstract

The conservation of nature in Norway has mainly been grounded on the idea of preservation of wilderness areas, while the cultural influence within many of these areas often has been overlooked. The present study shows that many of these conservation areas hardly can be defined as undisturbed nature. GIS methods have been used to evaluate an important aspect of the cultural impact in conservation areas, namely deforestation. By combining a new high-resolution deforestation model with the nature conservation areas in Norway, we found that many of the nature conservation areas are highly influenced by previous land use. Around 11.7 % (3,629 km2 ) of the national parks, 18.4 % (3,183 km2) of the landscape conservation areas and 13.7 % (774 km2 ) of the nature reserves have been deforested. Given the present trend in land use abandonment and in a historical perspective the extremely low outfield resource utilization, these landscapes will be ecologically and aesthetically changed by future reforestation. Given the presented results, we recommend an in-depth study of the cultural impact within nature conservation areas in Norway.