Due to soft grounds in combination with seasonal variation in soil humidity, there is a lack of stands that are possible to cut during spring and autumn in some geographical regions. For Holmen Skog this sometimes means that a large proportion of the contracted private forest is cut during the winter when the ground is frozen. One consequence of this is that the proportion of winter stands in the stand bank of own forest increases while spring and autumn stands becomes a scarcity. This in combination with milder winters, especially when there is a long period of reduced bearing capacity in spring or autumn, means that the situation rapidly can become critical. The overall goal with this study was to generate basic data for decision support in the work to achieve a sustainable distribution between own forest and contracted private forest in the stand bank. The study took place at Holmen Skog, district of Umeå, during autumn 2007 and was based on interviews and an analysis of harvest planning and delivery data. The study showed that there is a problem with how the cutting is distributed between own and contracted private forest during the year and that it foremost is the proportion of winter thinning of own forest that has increased in the stand bank.

The basis of road investments is to minimize the transportation cost. The forest industry wants roundwood to be available during the whole year. One way of determine which road to invest in is to do a cost/benefit calculation. SCA Forest lacks a uniform approach to determine the utility of a road investment. The goal of this report is to describe how the organization works today and find areas of improvement. The data collection was done through interviews.

Because of the large economic growth in China there are many companies who have economic interests in the Chinese market. Also in the forest market companies have started to invest in China and the interest for the market is growing. The question is how the Chinese forest market will develop in the years to come? How will China?s entry on the market of forest products affect the global forest market? The purposes of this study are to describe production, consumption and trade of forest products, and China?s possible competitive advantage in the forest industry. The purpose of this study is also to describe how China?s entry on the forest market affects the world market of forest products.

Due to the growing population in Stockholm, some of the urban green areas are beingsubjected to exploitation. Hammarbyskogen is an urban forest in the south of Stockholm andis an example of a green area that is planned to be transformed into an urban environment.This paper investigates key qualities and values of an urban forest of Hammarbyskogenvalued by local inhabitants of the neighbourhoods of Hammarbyhöjden and Björkhagen in thesouth of Stockholm. In addition to that, the study seeks to investigate people?s perception ofthe planned development of the forest as well as investigate how these perceptions andqualities are being incorporated into the process of neighbourhood development.Using text analysis, interviews and discussion forums, findings have been made showing thatthe local inhabitants value the urban forest mostly for its ecological and recreational qualities.Regarding perception of the change, people are either positive or negative to the developmentwhich can be explained by people?s experienced sense of place and place attachment of thearea and the forest itself. The study has also shown that the urban planners rely on localinhabitants? view, as well as on expert knowledge during the process of planning.The results of the study contributes to a better understanding of why and for what purposesurban forests are important for the city dwellers..

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.

Our population are ageing. As this happens more people will be in need of long term care facilities. We now know that some elderly people with certain background factors are more likely to be injured or sick. One of the four biggest background factors is fall propensity. Most of the reported falls come from long term care facilities, approximately 60 % of the care takers in long term care facilities fall one time or more each year.

The price of Swedish forest properties has gone up by 77 percent during the past five years. Amongst private forest managers the high price level signals optimism and confidence for the future. Many forest owners manage large capital in the forest and a planned economy is to a larger extent demanded to achieve a positive economic result. Forest is long-term and to maximize a single year without planning for the years to come results in less optimization of the parameters available to achieve a favourable economic result. This case study investigates the investment of two forest properties situated in Götaland. The management of the forest has been planned for both properties during a period of ten years.

A common goal in practical forest management is to maximize the yield, measured in economical terms. When a forest stand is thinned a so called inoptimality loss can arise due to non-optimal decisions. This means that the selected management schedule results in a lower net present value than the optimal one which lowers the profitability for the forest owner. Holmen Skog uses the term tract which means an aggregation of stands made before a management action. A tract should be delineated in different tract parts in connection with pre-thinning planning if there is different bearing capacity within the tract, different thinning grades should be used or if the tract contains a weaker part that should not be thinned.

Nature´s healing capacity is well known and is today an important asset in the protection against stress. Noise problems in cities and it´s green spaces are increasing which in turn provokes stress and in the long term can lead to cardiovascular diseases. To promote people?s health it is important that natural environments have good soundscapes, research show that visiting natural surroundings and listening to sounds of nature promote rehabilitation and relief stress. The purpose of this essay is to determine the value of rehabilitation in forests in Carlshem and Röbäck.

Who has the ownership of a company´s long-term strategy, and who should have it? Is it the board of directors or the senior management? Swedish law and regulations seemingly point in one direction, whereas the findings of studying the relationship between CEO and chairman of the board in eleven Swedish listed large- and mid-cap companies, point the other way. In a majority of the companies the senior management have the ownership of the long term strategy whilst the board of directors merely hold a control function. The possible effects on the companies managed as well as the rules and regulations they are managed according to, are analyzed..

After the last is age there was a long period when there was no shortage of forest for peoples needs. People living in Sweden could use the forest resources at their will. Around 4000 years BC the inhabitants of southern Sweden started to use the agricultural system and people become more stationary. The farms were located together in groups and together they formed a social association, the village. Successively the population grew and in some areas the forest started to become a finite resource.

Unemployment and long term unemployment is a reality for a large number of people in Sweden. This may be the result of structural changes in the labor market, but involves a wide range of issues. Along with other actors, the social services are obliged to support the long term unemployed to find a job. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the work done by social workers towards the long term unemployed, 25-49 years old, in two municipalities. We performed altogether six qualitative interviews.

Thinning is the partial removal of trees in a forest stand prior to final harvest. The term can be divided in pre-commercial thinning where little if any volume is removed from the stand and commercial thinning where removals are intended to provide a positive economic result. From a silvicultural point of view, the goal of thinning is to enhance future crop tree quality by removing low-quality stems and providing sufficient space for the accelerated development of retained ones (Huuskonen & Hynynen, 2006). The goals of this study was to see if commercial thinning could positively affect the short and medium term timber supply (MTTS) in the Interior regions of British Columbia (BC), and whether or not Scandinavian forestry practices could be adopted in the BC context. The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) has created significant forest planning problems in BC. The annual allowable cut (AAC) was raised to capture beetle-killed timber while still merchantable.

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the term attractiveness is interpreted in Swedish contemporary urban planning. The focus is to analyse how the term is discursively constructed and by this highlight the conceptions that exist around what makes a city attractive. We want to emphasize the importance of a deeper understanding of how attractiveness is used in urban planning and how the term is a part of the development of our cities. Given the use of attractiveness as a part of visionary goals for Malmö´s and other Swedish cities future development, our intention, therefore, is to enhance the understanding of what the use of attractiveness means in respect of the creation and construction of power relations in time and place. The framework of our analysis is based on the discourse theory approach and used as a way of understanding how urban ideals is discursively constructed.

This study aims to build a deeper understanding on how shareholder value is created in Private Equity investments, especially during the holding period. The study is a qualitative study of the buyout of the access security company Bewator AB made by the Swedish Private Equity firm EQT in 2002. The buyout became highly successful due to various reasons. The study draws the conclusion, contrary to popular belief, that Private Equity firms create value through taking a long term view on business developing rather than being short term value destroyers. Incentive alignment is another important factor..