Bakgrunden till detta arbete är att Bioenergi i Luleå AB måste tillmötesgå kundkraven för att behålla sina marknadsandelar och ha möjlighet att utöka dessa. På senare tid har de stora kunderna börjat efterfråga bränslepellets som är certifierad enligt Forest Stewardship Council, FSC. Examensarbetets syfte var att hjälpa Bioenergi med framtagandet av en Forest Stewardship Council Chain of Custody certification. I den inledande kartläggningen användes i huvudsak intervjuer och observationer för att studera de anställda och tillverkningen. För att identifiera aktiviteter och brister i Bioenergis system studerades även interndokumentation och relevant litteratur.

This study was performed in collaboration with Moelven Skog AB, Örebro district. The purpose of the study was to review existing literature in order to describe the current status of harvester based measurement technology as the way to provide information for calculating payment to the forest owners. In addition to this, a short survey was conducted to find out how a switch to harvester based measurement would affect the administrative workload on timber purchasers working for the district. The literature study shows that the harvester measurement technology is ready to use if it is combined with well-established routines for control of the harvesters, methods for automatic quality indexing of the timber and ways of creating pricelists specially adapted for harvester measurement. Pricing each stem seems to be the most promising method. Stem pricing has several benefits.

This thesis work is a 30hp D-level assignment in design as a co-operation between MälardalenUniversity and Scania CV AB in Södertälje. The purpose was to develope a close fitted catwalk.The market has seen an increasing value for these types of applications and have the ambition to keep up with the rest of the competitors. The catwalks of todays standards shall be estetical attractive, have a non slippery surface and be costefficient.While working with this project I have spent a lot of time with the concept proposals and with the evaluation of the concepts, resulting in a final CAD model and a approximation of the cost estimate. The new catwalk fulfils all the new recommendations and rules as sharp edges, ADR, the height of the stepup and a non slippery surface with built in drainage..

Since the turn of the millennium a sharp increase in the interest for bio energy has been observed. Important reasons for this growing interest can be due to the fact that fossil fuels are a finite resource. A net discharge of greenhouse gases occur when fossil fuels are burned. The discharge of greenhouse gases are considered to be the main reason to the greenhouse effect. Means of control to increase the use of bio energy has been introduced and, as intended, the use of bio energy has increased. As a result of the legal provisions the ability to pay for bio energy has increased, which the forest industry view as a problem.

This report is part of an Bachelor of Science work in forestry, conducted for the community of Borås, Sweden. In order to create a forest management plan for the area of Hestra, a survey was conducted. People living in the area were given the opportunity to reply to the survey. The questions in the survey are both personal and forestry-related. The aim is to reach out to the different categories of people when it comes to age, living and the different aspects of visiting the woods.

This Masters thesis is performed at the request of the National Board of Forestry in order to investigate how the Swedish municipalities use their forests. The study is of general character with emphasis on the social values of the forests. The municipalities? purposes with their forests have varied over time, but lately the social aspects have been recognised as interesting. The social values of the forests can be defined as the values from the forests that contribute to the wealth of humans. This has socio-economic importance for the municipalities. The study was performed as a quantitative questionnaire survey, complemented with qualitative interviews.

The company Olofsfors AB manufactures drive belts for forest machinery, known as ECO-Tracks, and abrasion-resistant steel and cutting edges for graders, excavators and tractors, known as Bruxite and SharqEdges. Manufacturing these products requires the steel to be heated and molded, then submerged in water and hardened. The water used in the hardening of steel is pumped to the process from pits below the floor and then pumped back to the pit after it?s been used. Since the temperature of this water rises after being used to harden the steel the temperature of the pumping pit needs to be adjusted to maintain its setpoint of 21°C.

The market for biofuels from the forests have had a positive development and the job initiators for this master´s thesis wanted to examine the profitability of a method for harvesting forest fuel, which was unfamiliar to them. The method was the ?long tree tops-method?, here called the LT-method. The LT-method is characterised by the fact that timber is harvested as the only roundwood assortment while the rest of the stem, which in other cases would become pulpwood, is harvested as forest fuel together with the logging residues. The method is based on the assumption that advantages in handling of the forest fuel assortment such as increased load weights for forest hauling and truck transportation, should compensate for the lower price for pulpwood when sold as forest fuel. The aim of the study was to compare the profitability of the LT-method with the GROT-method (harvest of timber, pulpwood and logging residues) and conventional logging without any harvest of forest fuel, and aslo to try to identify factors affecting the profitability of the different methods.

Piles of deadwood are often retained in forests after management to support the biodiversity ofsaproxylic organisms which depend on deadwood to survive. Any knowledge about the crucial role ofpiles as suitable habitat of saproxylic organisms compared to single distributed deadwood objects thatare around the piles would help conservation actors to motivate more forest owners to supportsaproxylic organisms during their management. Therefore to give facts to this the saproxylic fauna ofdifferent pile positions (up and low) was studied and compared to distributed deadwood samplesaround each pile. Our study was focused on saproxylic beetles. Some other parameters such asdiameter, deadwood volume, pile volume and decay stage were assessed to define any effect.

The idea for this project was initiated together with one of the leaders in the forest, paper and packaging industry. To get through an A/R CDM process the company is exposed to the risk of failing the process or that the overall costs will exceed the benefits of the project. This would delete the incentives to invest in GHG removals compared to purchasing emission allowances on the carbon market. The questions that have been raised and needs clarification in the thesis are the following:? From a company perspective, what are the incentives for implementing Forest Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects?? What is a likely financial outcome of a reforestation CDM project on degraded land in the Guangxi province of the Peoples Republic of China?? When does an investment like this break even with the cost of buying market based carbon emission allowances? The objective of this master thesis is to carry out a research about the incentives for forest, paper and packaging companies to invest in reforestation through the clean development mechanism.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and fluxes in forest ecosystems are influenced by natural and human disturbances. In the tropical regions the highest impacts on disturbance in forest C cycles are related to human activities such as conversion of natural lands to cropland and pasture areas and to forest plantations. The disturbances in the forest C cycles will release CO2 emissions to the atmosphere triggering global warming. In this study the focus was set in subtropical soils in Brazil, south extreme region of Bahia. The aim of the study was to investigate whether reforestation of Eucalyptus plantations under former pasture areas will help mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration.

On commission of the County administrative board in Värmland County a method was developed for analysis of the occurrence of artificial land use at lakes and watercourses. With artificial land use is meant land significantly affected by man. Two bases have been used to carry out the analysis. In one of the analysis the vegetation database and in the other GSD¹-Marktäckedata (land cover data) was used (this method has been used by County administrative board in Jönköping County).The analysis comprises all watercourses within Alsterälven river basin. The digital water bodies are created by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute on the basis of GSD-Översiktskartan (general map).

Over 90% of forestry work is carried out today by contractors, thereforeclear agreements between the client and the contractor it is of utmostimportance. Contract Packages for work within the forest sector (APSE) is acollection contract templates that the industry jointly developed for thispurpose. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how forest contractors doto keep themselves updated of the current laws and government regulations,which channels are available to accomplish this and what possible obstaclesmay occur. 20 interviews were conducted with contractors engaged inlogging. The results show, among other things, the availability of and whichchannels most contractors use out of which aggravating circumstances existand how strong they are perceived and what is expected of the client in thisregard..

The main purpose of this M. Sc. thesis is to increase the knowledge about managing urban forestry for recreational use. The analysis is focusing on differences between visitors? experiences in the north and south of Sweden, represented by Nydalasjön and by Härlanda tjärn.

Buffer zones play an important role for the water quality in our watercourses. When harvesting a forest close to a watercourse a buffer zone should be left. When it's not left, it will lead to radical changes in the environment for the water organisms. The overall purpose of this thesis was to illuminate the production- and environmental thinking when establishing new buffer zones in south of Värmland. The partials goals were to determine choice of tree species, ways of regenerate, occurrence of soil scarification and the occurrence of machine tracks in newly established buffer zones.