The purpose of Älvdalens besparingsskog is to develop the district and most of all the forestry in Älvdalen. It's owned by about 2 300 private forest owners who's landed properties are located in Älvdalen. Every year the besparingsskogen gives out a lot of its profit in form different types of subsidies for agriculture and forestry. The owners can apply for subsidies for several of the costs that occur in forestry. During the period 2000-2003 the owners are offered forest management plans and pcSKOG-gård at no cost for their private forest properties. The purpose of this master's thesis was to find out if the activity in the forestry changed when the forest owners got new forest management plans and the computer program pcSKOG-gård.

The forests in Sweden have, for a long time, been managed intensively. This has led to even-aged stands with few tree species and a lack of dead wood. Therefore, general conservation measures in connection with regeneration felling are important in order to promote biodiversity. Inventories carried out by the Swedish Forest Agency, however, show that about 25 % of the felled area does not reach the level of the Forestry Act, regarding general conservation measures. The aim of my study was to see whether exemptions from the six week notice of reporting regeneration fellings (the Forest Agency demands a report six weeks in advance of fellings), affect the results of the general conservation measures taken.

The purpose of this report was to investigate how the Umeå School of Business and Economics at Umeå university can work to increase the share of courses and programmes that discuss sustainable development. Furthermore the purpose was to develop an action plan that can be used to increase that share. Methods used were a questionnaire directed towards the educators at the Umeå School of Business and Economics and an assessment of the content of courses and programmes connected to the Umeå School of Business and Economics. There was no clear structured way of working with education for sustainable development, but at the same time there was a will to integrate sustainable development in the education. Curricula were according to the educators an important tool to achieve this integration, their experience were that there are not enough time, people and money to work with sustainable development in the education and they would like to see more clear directions from the management.

This report is the result of a thesis work done at the Department of Engineering Sciences, Uppsala University, and includes 15 ECTS points. The work has been performed at Företag A, a company specializing in electronics whose major product has become a sophisticated tool used by authorities across northern Europe. Företag A has initiated a quality management system according to the criteria set by ISO 9001. Following demands from customers, Company A has now decided to also start working towards a certification according to SS-EN ISO 9001:2008, this work is the foundation for the thesis work. The thesis work has been limited to the production process and the aim has been to enable this process to be certified according to ISO 9001:2008. The work has been performed by analyzing the existing quality management system and the requirements for each process included, whereby the gap between the current and the target state has been mapped. Suggestions have then been made on how this gap can be filled, some of these suggestions have also been carried out during the thesis work. The conclusions drawn are that quality management does not have to be complicated, but quickly becomes so when the complexity of the processes increases.

The development of IT systems is usually accomplished by some form of system development methodology. It can be performed as the waterfall method, where each phase is completed before the next begins. One of the reasons to follow a development methodology is that the process is more structured, faster and that the product will have higher quality. One risk of not using a system development approach is that the code can be unstructured and difficult to maintain.This paper describes an alternative method in which the development occurred without the use of any system development methodology. This has been possible because there was a clear goal of the program that should be developed.

The spruce bark beetle (Ips typographhus) is one of the 25 000 species of insects in Sweden, an insect of great economic importance because it can alone terminate forest of high value. During the past decade, insights of climate change received with increasing attention. If the future brings a milder climate in the north and therefore a longer growing season, one would think that it would only affect the forestry to the better? Yet in recent time, outbreaks after storm felling seems to occur more frequently. The Spruce bark beetle ruins millions of cubic meter of Norway spruce (Picea abies) in Sweden alone, with more frequent storm felling and a larger amount of wind thrown threes in the forests there will also be room for an advancing reproduction.

Disturbances, such as fire and wind, are important for saproxylic beetles (= beetles depending on decaying wood) to gain substrate in boreal forests. Clear-cutting is an example of a man-made disturbance. Measures such as prescribed burning have been made to resemble natural disturbances. The aim of this study was to see which clear-cut characteristics are important for the occurrence of the saproxylic beetle Upis ceramboides. This is a species favored by open habitats and is said to respond positively to forest fires. The distribution area in Sweden for this species has decreased during the last two centuries and I wanted to see if there were differences between clear-cuts in Hälsingland, where it is very rare and decreasing, and Norrbotten where this study was conducted.

During the past 20 years, the price of forest estates in Sweden has raised more than the price of timber. The purpose of this study is to investigate if it, despite this development, is possible to buy a forest estate based on economic grounds. Different forest parameters will also be studied to analyse their effect on the profitability. The study is done in cooperation with the company LRF Konsult. Purchase price of 34 forest estates near the coast of Norrbotten, Sweden, has been compared to yield valuation. For the valuation, guidelines from the Swedish author Lantmäteriet was used.

In Europe poplar plantations has been planted for more than one hundred years. In the first plantation was made in 1940. The interest for poplars has since then shifted over the years and has for long periods been very low but is now slowly increasing again. The main reasons why poplars are becoming more interesting are because of their great production potential. Nevertheless, the knowledge of how to mange poplars in Sweden are very low and very little research has been done concerning management of the species. The objective for this study was to; 1) investigate and document experience and results obtained in practical Swedish forestry, 2) to give a fair picture of the perceived advantages and disadvantages that the poplars has for the forestry, 3) document what the foresters that has experience and those who has no experience of poplar plantations thinks about the potential of poplars.

Recent studies have reemphasized the importance of competition in democracy. An ideaoriginating from Weber: that demoeratic competition leads to more qualified leaders, has been resurrected. Research shows that democracies are more Iikely to elect leaders with a high leve l of education, and with in demoeratic states stronger competition correlates with elected politicians with higher education, more political experience and higher previous income. This study researehes whether the earrelation between greater competition and electedcandirlates with higher "Curriculum vitae-qualities" holds between electoral systems. Does a more competitive electoral system elect candirlates that score higher on such measures? Using education as a proxy forthese qualities the study traces different outcomes on education in a mixed electoral system, camparing the majoritarian (more competitive) part of the electoral system with the prop011ional (less competitive) part.

Sweden's government says in the bill 2008/09: 140 that military service should be suspended and replaced with a system based on voluntary recruitment. In the essay, I will make an argument analysis of the parliamentary debate on the bill from the 12th of June 2009 with the following questions: On what is the different side?s argument based on? Are the arguments essentially and factually substantiated? Is there a clear political party tendency among the for-/counter arguments? The method is a "Pro et contra" analysis, a logical systematization of the arguments. The analysis will take start in the headline; Conscription should be suspended in favour of a voluntary system based on contract employed soldiers. The presentation of arguments in the analysis will be guided by the chronological order.

Today the human being see energy as a matter of course but the resources that is used for extract energy is today not enough for the world demand. Of all the energy that is used in Sweden today approximately 40 % goes to the building stock. This number will most likely increase if not necessary actions will be made on the already existing building stock since new houses constantly are built which will be added up on the already existing energy supply. This takes cause of action on the already existing building stocks, to fulfill the demands of the future use of energy that has been set by the authority. At the same time the thermal conditions cannot be influenced by the necessary changes that must be made.

This study presents results for observing forest changes in Sweden using multi-temporal L-band satellite data and is a part of the JAXA?s ALOS Kyoto and Carbon Initiative. An extensive dataset of images acquired by the Advanced Land Observing Satellite Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (ALOS PALSAR) is investigated for clear-cut detection in boreal forests in northern Sweden (Lat. 64°14? N, Long.

The aim of the thesis is to analyse and understand resolution, repeatability and reproducibility of the measurement system for package distance. The measurement system for package distance is already in use, no Gage R&R has been performed on the system and before spreading use of the system the quality of the system has to be understood and approved.

Environmental management systems are a way of systematizing and streamlining an organization's environmental efforts. Within its EMS the organization determines it´s environmental policy and various environmental objectives. In order to achieve their environmental objectives the organization produces action plans that describe how they will work towards the objectives. Stora Enso Skog AB´s districts have been assigned to produce action plans for the company´s environmental objective of 90 % approved everyday nature consideration in final felling and any targets included within this objective. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the districts work with these action plans and how this could be improved.