This report is presenting an approach that can be used to measure water surfaces in difficult conditions caused by dense vegetation and lack of nearby known points. The objective was to make a contribution to necessary measures for adaptation against floods in Grums Municipality along the stream Karlbergsån, which may occur when persistent rain raises the level of the stream. Along the river there are low-lying areas prone to flooding. According to Grums Municipality, the stream may widen where the water level differences are large, to create a better flow path and to counteract flooding. Grums Municipality was also interested in survey stormwater discharges which may affect the water level in the stream.

As a student during my studies, I have been told about entrepreneurs who have red numbers in their financial statements, and there is a forest machine operator shortage in Sweden. The basic idea of this thesis was to examine the underlying factors that may have caused the problems described above. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the factors that create stress and job satisfaction as a forest machine operator. The study was performed as a comparison between forest companies own harvesting teams and entrepreneur teams to investigate if there are any differences in stress and job satisfaction between the two different types of team. The study was conducted in collaboration with SCA Skog. The material for this study was collected by doing interviews with SCA's harvesting teams. A total of 27 forest machine operators were interviewed, divided into a total of 10 separate harvesting teams. It was very similar between the different type of teams, which situations the operators experienced stress.

The aim for this study where to investigate the frequency of cutting cracks in saw timber harvested in the storm-damaged forests in regions where the storms Hilde and Ivar hit. The idea for this work came from one of the region?s biggest actors, SCA Skog and Jämtlands district. The purpose where to find out how big proportion of the saw timber that contains cutting cracks, their financial cost in lost wood value and also give advice and suggestions on how to work against the frequency of cutting cracks. For the field-study some guidelines where used to make sure that the samples were taken under the same conditions, they were: ? The field-study must be performed under harvesting of storm-felled forest, which are horizontal/inclined trunks. ? The averaged sized tree will make it possible to harvest saw timber. ? The trunks can?t be root cut. A methodology called in Swedish ?Trissmetoden? was used because it is the most frequent used methodology in earlier performed studies and the only one that can be used I field. Under the field-study data were collected from 570 saw timber logs, 30 logs from each one of the tested harvesters.

This study was performed in an afforestation experiment established 1982 on an abandoned peat harvesting area, Flakmossen, in the province of Värmland, SW Sweden. The experimen-tal design include planting with Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), in combination with various drainage intensities (20, 30, and 40 m between ditches), and fertilizer doses 0, 100, and 200 g PK per seedling applied at the date of planting. The aim of this study was to achieve more knowledge about the conditions on afforestation of peat harvesting areas, especially regarding drainage intensity and fertilization requirements, by means of determining the stand growth and yield in the Flakmossen trial. The forest growth did not differ significantly between the drainage intensities tested when the same amount of phosphor and potassium fertilizer was added. Thus, shorter distances between ditches than 40 m can not be recommended. When no fertilization was carried out seedling survival was very low, and the growth of sur-vived seedlings was poor. The largest diameter and height growth were observed in the areas where the highest dose of phosphorus and potassium (200g/seedling) was given.

In ambition to produce more and better harvests, artificial fertilizers are used to produce a better growth of crops in the agriculture landscape. This contributes to leakage of nutrients. Our forests also exhibit a leakage of nutrients. Air pollution contributes to more nutrients. High precipitation with high water flows as a consequence seems currently to occur more frequently in the county of Halland.

With an increased demand for biomass based energy and with development of better technique harvest biomass, new possibilities open up. With the possibility to combine traditional cleaning of road?s right of way with biomass harvesting, the work of suppressing tree vegetation could become profitable or at least decrease the road maintenance cost. However, knowledge about productivity and profitability in mechanical biomass harvesting in roads? right of ways are still limited.

The economic conditions for Swedish dairy farmers are constantly changing. The numbers of producers are declining and the economic conditions for dairy production are weakening debilitating. To improve the economic situation for a farm a hired contractor is a possible solution since previous studies show that machinery cooperation may be beneficial for the farmers. The aim of this study is to examine the possibility for farmers to cut costs by hiring a contractor for harvesting silage. A comparison between using own machinery and hire a contractor is the starting point of this study. Another aim is to discuss the farmer?s decision process when achieving today?s situation and to determinate what factors affect their decisions. The study is based on cases selected from four farms that today have chosen not to or only to some extent, hire a contractor for harvesting silage.

The annual demands for forest fuels increases in Sweden. At present, large unutilized biomass resources is found in young, dense forests from which about five million oven-dry tonnes (ODt) (23 TWh) could annually be extracted as forest fuel. But harvesting small trees give high logging costs and new cost-efficient harvesting techniques are therefore required. The aim was to study the productivity of Vimek 608 BioCombi in forest fuel thinning of Lodgepole pine and to calculate the economy of the harvesting and estimate the thinning quality. The time study was performed in Åmarken in the county of Västerbotten.

Orsa Besparingsskog has an aim to take nature considerations in relation to the harvested volume and area of the annual felling. Around 15 percent of the acreage and 10 percent of the volume should be set aside. It is important to keep close to those figures to avoid future negative effects on the long-term harvesting planning. The purpose of this study was to use laser scanning data to estimate those proportions. The result showed that the proportion of conservation considerations in the ten selected objects in the study was significantly higher than the target of 15 percent of the acreage and 10 percent of the volume. The result showed a setting aside of 19 percent of the acreage and 17 percent of the volume.

During the period 1952-2008, real prices of wood before taxes and charges declined. However, the actual net income has not changed by the same percentage as the price list, because taxation, driving costs and the ability to make deductions has changed. This report considers the inflation by using the Swedish consumer price index. Net income refers to the remaining income when relevant costs, taxes and fees have been paid.The purpose of this study was to examine how the private forest owner's real net income has evolved over the period 1952-2008 for three categories of forest owners. These three categories are1.

The aim for the study was to examine a harwarder´s (combined harvester-forwarder) productivity when harvesting forest fuel in first thinning stands that contains Lodgepole pine and calculate the economy of the harvesting work and estimate the quality of the thinning . The field study area where located near Arvån, about 15 kilometres south ?east from the city of Lycksele. The field studies were taken place in three different stands. All tree stands had the same tree age, but the tree species combination and the density varied.

A recommendation for stand treatment of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) is, in a scientific point of view, lacking when it comes to harvesting for biomass energy. Within the next decades it is expected that 280 000 hectares of lodgepole pine will have reached thinning age on the domains of Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA). Due to this the interest has grown rapidly for studying the possibilities of harvesting biofuel assortments already in the first thinning. In this study the distribution of the biomass within lodgepole pine trees has been studied and taken into account for estimating the proportions of harvested assortments when using different methods of thinning. The methods studied were conventional biofuel-harvesting (with delimbed branches gathered separately from the round wood) and thinning with cutting of round wood and long tops (incl.

The purpose of this study has been to examine whether the bottom fauna of the stream Stensjöån, has been negatively influenced since the harvesting of peat began on the nearby peat moss Skäftesmyr or not. Comparison has been made with the results of index calculations from earlier examinations in the stream, two calculated indexes has been made, Danish fauna index and ASPT-index. The sampling was made with the kick sampling method, SS-EN 27 828. Three locations were chosen for the examination, one upstream from the peat moss, one just downstream from where the brook from the peat moss joins Stensjöån and a third location near the outlet of the stream to the lake Stensjön. The samples were sorted and the found animals identified to the taxonomic level required for the calculation of the two indexes.

Stormwater is surface runoff water that originates from precipitation or snowmelt and that on hardened surfaces prevents to infiltrate the ground. In city areas stormwater can consists of major amounts pollutants and when reaching a lake or watercourse it can cause damages on vegetation and animals. Therefore it is important to treat polluted stormwater before it reaches the recipient. The municipality of Örebro have since the 90ies an extensive work with treatment of stormwater in sedimentation ponds. A new stormwater treatment project is planned in an industrial estate in Skebäck, Örebro.

The aim of this study was to quantify the productivity and the costs of different harvesting systems (teams), containing harvesters equipped with accumulating harvester heads and forwarders, in first commercial thinnings were an integrated harvest of pulpwood and energy wood were performed. In the beginning the plan was to study and measure 20 sites before and after harvest. Due to storms during the summer of 2010, complete data could only be obtained from 8 of these 20 sites. Seven of these sites were privately owned and one was owned by UPM, all of the sites had been pre-commercially thinned. The mean stem density before harvest was 2578 stems per ha and the mean stem volume was 0.074 m3solid over bark.On average 1518 stems/ha was harvested.