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Lund University

Writing and sources

A guide on writing and the use of sources intended for students at the department of Biologi and CEC.

Data and statistics

The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) 

The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) is an agency under the Ministry of the Environment with expertise in meteorology, hydrology, oceanography and climatology. SMHI provides open access data  for research, including both observed and model based data on weather, hydrology, oceanography, air quality and climate. The data is available thru the webpage Öppna data för forskning och utveckling. Before downloading and using data, make sure that you read and understand SMHIs conditions of use.

Naturvårdsverket 

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket) is an agency under the Ministry of the Environment. They are responsible for compiling knowledge and documentation about the state of the environment, as well as for the development and implementation of environmental policy.

The Environmental Protection Agency has also gathered resources where you can find data on the state of the environment in Sweden. On their website, you can find information, reports and statistics on subjects relating to pollution and biodiversity. They also provide links to pages with the data itself on the webpages Data och statistik and Miljöövervakningsdata. Most of the information is only available in Swedish. 

The Swedish Board of Agriculture (Jordbruksverket) 

The Swedish Board of Agriculture (Jordbruksverket) is a government agency under the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation. They are responsible for the agricultural and horticultural sectors, and constitute the expert authority on agri-food policy.

The Board of Agriculture is the authority responsible for Sweden's official statistics regarding the agricultural sector. All official statistics reports are available through their webpage Statistik. If you would like to perform additional statistics, they provide access to the data itself through their database Jordbruksverkets statistikdatabas. The statistics reports and the database are only available in Swedish.

The Swedish Forest Agency (Skogsstyrelsen)

The Swedish Forest Agency is the national authority in charge of forest-related issues. Their main function is to promote the kind of management of Sweden's forests that enables the objectives of forest policy to be attained. The Swedish Forest Agency provide statistics about forests and forestry. All statistics can be found in the Statistical Database.

Statistics Sweden (Statistiska Centralbyrån, SCB)

According to Swedish law, official statistics must be available for general information, investigation and research. The Government of Sweden has appointed 28 government agencies to be responsible for official statistics within their respective areas. Statistics Sweden (Statistiska Centralbyrån, SCB) is the government agency responsible for coordinating the system for the official government statistics. SCB are also responsible for developing, producing and disseminating the statistics.

Agencies that provide data for the official statistics include: Statistics Sweden (Statistiska Centralbyrån, SCB), the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (Havs- och Vattenmyndigheten), the Swedish Board of Agriculture (Jordbruksverket), the Swedish Chemicals Agency (Kemikalieinspektionen), the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket), the Swedish Forest Agency (Skogsstyrelsen), and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). 

The official statistics are divided into 22 subject areas, one being Environment. All statistics, sorted by subject area, are available from the SCB website under Finding statistics

Other Swedish government agencies

Water Information System Sweden (VattenInformationsSystem Sverige, VISS) is a database that has been developed by the County Administrative Boards (länsstyrelserna), the Competent Authorities of the Swedish Water Districts (vattenmyndigheterna) and the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (Havs och vattenmyndigheten). In WISS you can find classifications and maps of all major Swedish lakes, rivers, groundwater and coastal waters, as well as information about their status classification, environmental quality standards, environmental monitoring, protected areas and water-related measures.