AR250 (Land Resource Map 1:250.000) - Arable land

Definition: Arable land is a valid land resource attribute for certain classes of land types derived from the dataset AR5. These land types are pasture, forest, open land and marshland (peat bog). The land types have to fulfill requirements for soil quality and climate for plant production. The national land resource database (AR) classifies the land cover of mainland Norway according to the suitability for agriculture and natural plant production. National land resource datasets are available at scale 1:5.000 (AR5), 1:50.000 (AR50) and 1:250.000 (AR250). AR250 is the Norwegian low resolution land resource dataset, covering the entire mainland Norway. It is built and maintained for cartographic presentations at regional level (1:100.000 to 1:300.000). The dataset is not intended for spatial analysis. Features in AR250 are continuous areas represented as polygons with attributes assigned according to the classification criteria of AR250. The primary level of classification is land type (arealtype), based on a combination of land cover and land use. Second level attributes are forest site quality class (skogbonitet) and forest cover type (treslag). AR250 also includes information about arable land on current bare land, marsh or forest. In AR250, the general minimum mapping unit is 10 hectares for polygons that have identical combinations of attribute values. Smaller mapping units occur between identical land types if they have different forest cover or forest site quality.