Updated 25 October 2001

Structure of forest accounting

The statistics in Finland's forest accounting mainly describe changes in the timber resources and in the flows of wood material, as well as in associated economic values in the national economy. The core of forest accounting, i.e. the basic tables of wood material accounting, consist of wood stock balance, use balance and mass balance. Wood stock balance is an estimate of the annual changes taking place in the forest growing stock as consequence of biological tree increment, natural loss, and timber felling. Use balance is where annual data on the supply of, foreign trade in, use and production of wood and forest-industry products are compiled by branch of industry and commodity category. This balance monitors the use of wood raw material, its conversion into intermediate products and end products, the final consumption of products, the use of the intermediate products created in the course of conversion as raw material or energy sources, and the production of forest-industry products. Mass balance is where the forest industries' raw materials and products are made commensurable, expressed as amounts of wood (in dry-matter tonnes), and monitoring focuses on the binding of wood material into the wood raw material of the forest industries, into intermediate products, end products, fuels, and waste.

On the branch-of-industry level, and partly on the commodity level, wood stock balance, use balance and mass balance data can be connected to the national accounts' data on the economy and employment, input-output tables, and energy and emissions data. Forest accounting includes forestry, the forest industries, other industries, and final consumption analysed in accordance with the standard industrial classification used in national accounting.

In addition to wood, these statistics include the other forest-based benefits, whose quantities and monetary values are known, and area data related to the forests.

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