Due to the forest industry downsizing, many communities in rural forest regions in Canada and Sweden are facing problems to survive. In order to create community sustainability, resilience and well-being in remote forest regions, the view on the forest resources has shifted towards multiple use, through the concept of sustainable forest management (SFM). Beside the economic and ecological elements of sustainability, the social forest values are needed, contributing to the human well-being, local participation, stakeholder collaboration, human rights and cultural connection. In this thesis the embodiment of the social component of SFM within Prince Albert Model Forest (Canada), and Vilhelmina Model Forest (Sweden) will be examined. Being partners and facing similar challenges as rural boreal forest regions, the two model forests are compared through analysis of projects and activities, conducted interviews and organization documents. Looking at projects mentioned as successful by the interviewees, they all have elements from the social values of SFM. The direction can be explained by the introduction of the Forest Communities Program in Canada, demanding the Model Forests to work towards community stability and resilience, the Model Forest organization concept itself and the way global focus are increasing around social forest values. In the future, it may be important that the role of the MFs enable some kind of political authorization and legitimacy in order to improve conflict solving and indigenous rights equality.

This project was a request of Norrbodal´s Forestry Board, Västra Götaland. It was performed as a qualitative interview analysis of private forest owner?s deficient motivation regarding pre-commercial thinning. The purpose of the project is to investigate what the Forestry Board can do to motivate private forest owners to do more pre-commercial thinning. The results build upon 16 qualitative phone interviews with forest owners that have their forest within the district of Norrbodal. The owners are divided into two groups, the one who have performed the pre-commercial thinning and the one that has possible pre-commercial thinning needs on their properties according to the pre-commercial thinning analysis ,which is the result of a satellite analysis.

The business mission of Norra Skogsägarna is to achieve a profitable forestry for the private forest owners. With this as a background it is of interest for the forest owner association to know how forest owners think about voluntary retentions, the methods of increasing production and quality and if there are differences between those who have chosen to certify their forest and those who haven?t. This kind of knowledge is of importance, to in an effectively and adjusted way, help the forest owners achieve a profitable forestry. The objective of this master thesis is to increase knowledge about private forest owners? opinions of the methods of increasing production and quality and to what extent these methods are used.

The aim of this thesis is to study the private owner structure in the Swedish forestry. This will be done with both a investigation of forest owners in Småland the year 2000 and 2001 and also a statistic research for the private forest owners in Sweden right now and over the years. In Sweden more than half of the total forest area is owned by private forest owner, witch is approximately 22 600 000 ha. Private forestry includes the owner categories private person, ordinary partnership and the estate of deceased persons. The main part of the private forestry is to be found in Norrland but also in the rest of Sweden private forestry constitute a large part of the forestry area.

During the 8th and 9th of January 2005 a devastating storm named Gudrun entered the south of Sweden and a big part of the forest owners got their forests damaged. The study objective was to investigate on which basis and how the affected forest owners made their managment decisions immediately after the storm and if there are any differences between different categories of forest owners. - Members ? non members in a forest owner association (FOA) - Resident owners ? non resident owners - Female and male forest owner The study is based on a questionnaire survey with the purpose to examine the most important counsellor and information channels of the forest owners. A total of 450 forest owners participated in the survey. Results show that all categories of forest owners prefer professional counselling rather than personal counselling.

Data retrieved from airborne laser scanning represents a new source of forest data. Today, the technology has matured so that it can function in an operational environment. The aim of this study was to compile areas of application of laserdata in forestry. Moreover to analyze costs and accessibility of laserdata. The goal was to provide private forest owners information to support assessments of possible benefits of laserdata.

Beef cattle wintering outdoors should be provided a shelter, e.g. a type of barn or corresponding. This type of production requires appropriate soil types and secured animal welfare. For example, a clean and dry resting place needs to be provided to the animals. To receive an exemption for buildings the farmer has to have something equivalent that provides an adequate shelter.

The concept of school forest was drafted in 1970 by the Forest in School organization and is defined as an area occupied by a school for outdoor educational activity. The main purpose of this study was to examine how schools use the school forest in practice, how it can be linked to the forest as an ecosystem service and find out how the forest is taken into consideration in the spatial planning. The study is mainly qualitative in nature and has been based on interviews conducted with educators engaged in outdoor education at four selected schools in a municipality in Sweden. Focus has been on the cultural ecosystem services for school forest, for example the physical characteristics that are considered as positive, forest influence on students' physical / mental health and the educational benefits available to be in the woods. Search has also been made to see how the forest is taken into consideration in the spatial planning and also what a contract agreements involves.

The purpose of the survey was to find out how early childhood teachers work with the curriculum of I Ur och Skur with children between 1-3 years in the forest and how such educators are using the outdoor pedagogy in the forest environment in preschool.In order to answer the study's aim and objectives interviews were performed with six teachers in I Ur och Skur kindergartens.What emerged from this study is that forest excursions are a central part of the curriculum and is seen as their educational place. The teachers are working to create a feeling of security among the youngest children of enjoying the woods and also to raise an interest in the children. Natural materials are used during the forest stay and no other toys or materials.The results reveal that educators work to get the smallest children to use and develop their imagination at play and at the same time they are involved with the children in their discovery of the woods. With the smallest children in kindergarten it involves being on the level of children and as a teacher to have the flexibility to change the forest stay environment if needed..

The supply of raw materials has always been an important issue in the Swedish Forest industry. Buying timber from local suppliers is important. To ensure raw materials to their industries the forest company must offer good prices and good business deals to their suppliers. The aims with this work are to find out how the contact between private suppliers of raw materials and how the forest company can be developed. To be able to do a complete study of the problems connecting with this subject a quality interview study has been done.

This final thesis is initiated by the wood fuel department at the Swedish forest company Sveaskog as part of a project which also involves two other final thesises. The overall goal of the project is to investigate Sveaskog´s possibilities to produce and sell different wood fuel assortments in Västerbotten and the southern parts of Norrland. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how much wood fuel Sveaskog can produce in the area during the next five years and what that would cost. Furthermore the thesis will investigate the total possible supply of wood fuel from all other possible producers in the area. Treated assortments are forest residues from final fellings, whole trees from direct wood fuel thinnings, non industrial wood and industrial by-products from sawmills. The main effort to investigate Sveaskog´s production possibilities has been made to calculate the possible annual amount of forest residues and fuel from wood fuel thinnings that can be produced.

In the forest sector, non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners commonly interact with numerous stakeholders (e.g. forest managers, timber buyers, harvesting contractors and advisors) for counseling, planning, selling and hiring. Forest management is therefore built and influenced by the relationships between NIPF owners and other stakeholders. In the local context of a Southern Sweden, the Swedish Forest Agency (SFA) and the Southern Forest Owners Association (SÖDRA) are very influential stakeholders in small-scale forest management. Based on qualitative interviews and by means of grounded theory, an analysis of the relationships between NIPF owners and the mentioned organizations was carried out in order to understand the social context at the genesis of forest management decisions.

Silviculture in young stands in Sweden is below the mark concerning what has to be done in the forest, and it is time to solve the problem. The problem will not be solved only by the private forest owners, professional help is needed. Skogsägarna Mellanskog is one of four forest unions in Sweden who wants to play a role and take responsibility for forestry in the middle of Sweden. This academic essay is based on a market survey sent to 350 forest owners in the Örebro district. 186 of them answered the questions, giving a response frequence of 53 percentage. The purpose of the essay is to find the determining factors which will make a forest owner to find a collaborator when planning and carrying out the silviculture measures in young stands. The result of the survey shows that the forest owners are anxious about the price and the costs. The costs have a severe effect if the silviculture measures in young stands will be carried out or not.

Stands where pre commercial thinning has been ignored or inadequate often tend to have high stem density and low average diameter when they reach heights of thinning. In such stands, it can often be expensive to do a conventional pulpwood harvest as a first thinning. This study investigates the development of the stands and the economic outcome of forest fuel extraction, or a combined harvest as alternatives to the ordinary pulpwood harvest. Simulations in Heureka StandWise were performed for two thin and dense stands, which were constructed by data from the Swedish National Forest Inventory. The simulations show that the extraction of forest fuel in first thinning at an early stage can provide higher net revenue compared to conventional pulpwood harvest at the same time or later.

Resignations are common in all business sectors and can also be found among forest machine operators in the forest business. As the industry today faces a lack of forest machine operators it is justified to determine why machine operators choose to quit their jobs. The aim of this study was to a) find out the number of machine operators that have resigned b) identify and analyse the cause for these resignations c) identify the reasons why the machine operators started to work in the forest and d) give suggestions on different measures that will limit resignations amongst forest machine operators. A questionnaire was sent to machine operators who have quit working as employees, contractors or as employees for contractors with Holmen Skog during 2003-2007. 32 machine operators responded to the questionnaire. Interviews were made with 10 machine operators who had answered the questionnaire to gather more qualitative data. The results of the study indicate that fewer forest machine operators change profession than employees in other occupations in Sweden.