In today´s forestry, assessments of needs for thinning are based on basal area measurements. This is an indirect measurement. The approach and the developed assessment tables are based on an assumed production forest, which implies that management proposals in stands that deviate from the basic model may be misleading. Since Walter Bitterlich in 1948 launched the idea of the relascope, several modifications have been developed for different purposes. In common is that all are based on a certain angle measurement principle.

Summary The estate of Johannishus is situated in the south of Sweden and in the province of Blekinge, about 8 kilometres from the city of Ronneby. The main building together with the park represents the province´s only example of a well preserved estate environment from the early 1800th Century, and was declared as a historic monument in 1982 because of its unique role in the province. Johannishus Park has during 300 years developed in close relation to the main building, the landscape and the surrounding infrastructure. Each century and owner has had an influence on the park, which has resulted in an interesting visible cross-section of 300 years of Swedish garden history. Most noticeable today are the traces from late 19th Century, but in its oldest parts the park contains structures from the early 18th Century.

After the two big hurricanes called ?Gudrun? (2005) and ?Per? (2007) in the south of Sweden, some landowners planted Douglas fir instead of the traditional Norway spruce and Scots pine. They did it for different reasons. Some of them spreading their "risk", others because they wanted better growth or to obtain a more storm-resistant stand and trees more protected against rot. In this study, survival and growth were examined on Douglas fir in 21 different locations, owned by private landowners in southern Sweden.

In order to reduce the number of casualties and injured from accidents the rescue service must become more efficient and flexible. It is noted that far more people is injured and killed in traffic accidents than from fires. During the daytime the number of accidents in about three times higher than during the night, even so today the number of fire fighters on duty is the same day and night.Two computer models for simulation of different locations of the rescue services are used to determine the best options for placement of the rescue services. A cost-benefit analysis is also used to determine if today's fire stations are efficient for the society from an economical point of view.The results of the different models are that the fire station in Lund is misplaced. The number of ladders in Malmö can be reduced.

Denna studie undersökte hur heterogenitet i skogsbestånd samt omgivningsfaktorerna träddiameter, variation i träddiameter, död ved och lövinslag påverkar förekomsten av 18 skogsfågelarter i södra Sverige. Fågelinventeringen utfördes med hjälp av linjetaxering längs 100 meter långa transekter. Omgivningsfaktorerna mättes i varje transekt i fem provcirklar med diametern 10 meter. Analysen av träddiameter visade att det främst var diameter på barrträd, men inte på lövträd som inverkade på förekomsten av fåglarna. Sambanden mellan diameter på barrträd och totalt antal fågelarter var övervägande negativa vid 0-30 centimeter i diameter och övervägande positiva vid 30-80 centimeter i diameter.

Plant survival, plant damage and height growth were studied in nine wild cherry (Prunus avium L.) plantations in southern Sweden established between 2000 and 2002. All stands were located to the county of Småland. The survey was conducted during May and June in 2007. During the survey the height, diameter and quality of the cherry trees were recorded. In one stand, red ? berried Elder (Sambucus racemosa L.) was a dominant species.

This essay will examine the historical picture of the island Rapa Nui as it is portrayed in popular science and in ecohistorical literature of the university of Gothenburg. This historical picture states that the inhabitants of the island cut down a lot of trees in the process of transporting the big and heavy statues, moai, from the quarry to the platforms along the coastline of the island. During this process all trees disappeared and resulted in soil erosion. The cultivation was destroyed and brought hunger to Rapa Nui. The following rivalry for food led to a situation of war followed by a cultural collapse.

During the late 1800s fire suppression became increasingly effective in northern Sweden which led to decreased areas of fire-disturbed woodland and successive changes in the structure of forests. In the long run this can pose a serious threat to fire-dependent and fire-favored species. Today some fire-prone forest reserves are burned as a nature conservation act. Often partial cuttings are made before burning, with somewhat different motives. The purpose of the study in Långsidberget nature reserve was to give a general picture of forest history and its affect on today?s forest condition, and to show how partial cuttings affect burning conditions and results. Långsidberget is located close to areas that were colonized during the Middle Ages.

Approximately 4000-5000 hectares, of SCA´s forest land area in Västerbotten, are in need of pre-commercial thinning (PCT) every year. Within the management district, the areas annually treated with PCT must increase, in order to decrease the area with an urgent need for PCT. This can be done by employing more forest workers or entrepreneurs, by mechanized PCT or by an extended season for PCT. Positive experiences from a private forest owner, who started to carry out PCT when the first snow came and then continued for several months, gave an idea to investigate the possibilities to prolong the season of PCT. The purpose of this experiment was to compare PCT carried out when there was snow on the ground with PCT performed when there was no snow on the ground.

In September of year 2006, a young boy was brutally killed by a girl, age sixteen, in Örebro, Sweden. Girlgangs became a frequent subject in media. Professionals? working with adolescents claims that girlgangs notis an existing phenomena in Sweden as it is in for example in the United States. The aim of this thesis was to investigate if teenage girls in Sweden have a tendency to join gangs as they do in the United States.

Old industrial sites bear witness of the unsustainable industrial developments in the past. Today many of them stand abandoned and empty, old structures lacking function in our present society. We have in this thesis participated in a visionary student competition arranged by IFLA, International Federation of Landscape Architecture by developing a proposal based on a vision of how Stockholm can stimulate a greener development. We have done this by turning an unsustainable industrial site in the city into an ecological node; Arboretum Lövholmen. Our aim is to develop an entry for IFLA?s visionary student competition by creating a new sustainable design for the industrial area of Lövholmen in Stockholm. We have worked with the following research questions: How can we create a visionary design proposal for Lövholmen that promotes sustainable development with the help of ecological design? How can the competition format be a design tool? How can the working process developing a competition entry progress? The competition demands have shaped our working process and functioned as a platform for the structure of this thesis.

Humans have inhabited mountainous areas in northern Sweden since the end of the last glacial period, ca 8000 B.P., and their presence has marked the landscape in various ways. Older traces include the remains of hearths and dwelling sites, but there are also remains, such as culturally modified trees (CMT's), resulting from more recent activities in forested areas. This study aimed to document how people, both indigenous Sami's and Swedish settlers, have used an area northwest of Ammarnäs in Västerbotten, during the last 300 years, and what traces their activities have left in the area. I used historical records as well as an inventory of CMT's in the area to address this aim. Historical records of Sami activity are meagre, but it is clear that the people of the Ran and Gran Sami villages utilized the area long before 1500 A.D.

Many tropical rain forests has been lost or degraded as a result of human activities and environmental factors. Since the level of biodiversity is high in the tropics, maintaining these areas is of great importance. Forests like these are often assumed to benefit from forest restoration and rehabilitation. The INIKEA project area in Eastern Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, aims to improve biodiversity and/or species richness in the degraded forest through enrichment planting with indigenous species. The objective of this thesis was to evaluate how different treatments (liberation, gap-cluster planting and line planting) affect the biodiversity of natural regeneration in different forest types in the Rain forest Restoration Experiment, located in the INIKEA project area.

The effectiveness of Phlebiopsis gigantea to prevent spore infections from Heterobasidionannosum and Heterobasidion parviporum on hybrid larch stumps were investigated in fivestands in southern Sweden. All sites are former forest land and the age of the trees wasbetween 9 and 13 years.The study was implemented in August 2010, a month where spore dispersal should be great.The five sites were located in previously un?thinned monocultures of hybrid larch. The sporeload in the air was studied with the help of spore traps from three different tree species;Norway spruce, Scots pine and hybrid larch. A total of 146 spore traps, evenly distributed inall five sites were analyzed.

This Masters thesis is a historiographic study, which aim is to investigate how the Brezhnev administration 1964-82 describes the events taking place during the soviet cultural struggle 1917-32. The investigation is limited to how some of the literary groups, organisations and currents as well as a small number of Russian writers are viewed by the administration. The third and last edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which is considered as equivalent with the soviet official view, is used as source. The analysis made in this thesis is divided in two parts; the text analysis of the writers biographies is compared with the result of a discourse analysis, whose target is some of the literary groups, organisations and currents during the topical period. The discourse analysis is a pre-analysis, but its conclusions also have a value in itself.