National Meadow and Pasture Inventory (TUVA)

The Meadow and Pasture Inventory is a Swedish national inventory of biologically valuable meadows and pastures. The inventory collects information about a number of natural and cultural environments containing flora and other organisms that are highly dependent on hay-making or grazing animals. In the inventory only nature values connected to hay-making or grazing are assessed. The information from the inventory is open to all and collected in the Swedish Board of Agriculture database TUVA (www.jordbruksverket.se/tuva). The TUVA database contains information about: 1. Fully inventoried pastures and meadows (classified as mown meadow, open pasture, forest pasture and mountain pasture), 2. Meadows and pastures that are restorable, 3. Non-applicable meadows and pastures. A sub-classification of the types of meadows and pastures treated was also made using the Habitat Directive; Council Directive 92/43/EEC, or they were classified as developmental- or other types of fields. Inventories of indicator species (vascular plants), meadow fungi, trees and shrubs, cultural elements, water bodies and status of present management was also performed. The majority of the meadows and pastures in TUVA were inventoried between the years 2002 and 2004. Inventories have since then and up until 2012 been performed on a smaller scale. From 2016 and onwards, the national inventory has been reopened with a focus on performing repeated monitoring of already inventoried meadows and pastures. The information from the Meadow and Pasture Inventory is used for monitoring the environmental quality objective set up by the Swedish government; ‘a rich farming landscape’. It is also used for evaluating rural programs and for reporting to the EU Habitat Directive. The inventory is also used as a basis for national, regional and local strategies and programs for environmental management, spatial planning and case management. Data from the inventory have also been used for research.