Forestry is increasing on an industrial scale where collection of logging residues takes a greater part. This has resulted in more machinery and heavy machinery driving in the clear felled area, this increases the risk of soil damage that will occur in the form of soil compacting and rutting in the clearings. This affecting on the nature in a negative way and especially in rivers and lakes that are affected by siltation and acidification leading to increased levels of heavy metals and methyl mercury. The purpose of this study was to investigate why there is damage to the ground when working with the slash in forest management from the forest officer point of view. A self-designed questionnaire was used and 45 questionnaires were sent out to various companies all over Sweden.

AbstractThis report was undertaken at the request of the Management and maintenancedepartment of Swedish National Road Authority (Vägverket Region Sydöst) inJönköping.In 1992, the management and maintenance of Swedish roads were laid out onexternal contractors. When putting out a tender for the work, the foundation isfrom a national set of rules which are in constant change. This report is limited towinter road upkeep.The trend in the invitation for tenders is that it is moving from the moreconventional executional demands towards the less controlling demands. Thedownside of functional, less controlling demands is that it is difficult to articulatehow to measure them. The order authority therefore has to find ways to makesure to get what has been paid for.In connection to the invitation for tender of winter road upkeep for 2005, the newset of rules, ATB Vinter 2003 was deployed.The main purpose of this thesis is to see which the big changes in the set of rulesare and how these changes affect the organisation and activities of the contractor.It is also studied how the changes in execution is perceived by road users and howit affects the possibilities of the contractor to come as a newcomer to a new areaof administration.Interviews and examination of sets of rules has led to a list of a number ofchanges that the contractors feel affect their work in any sense.Views from road users that have come in to the order authority have beenscrutinized to see how they have experienced the change.

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).

To regularly remove woody vegetation along the roadside of forest roads is an important part of the road maintenance, since the vegetation binds moisture in the road side and, thus, the removal makes the road drying faster with results in improved bearing capacity. Vegetation removal also makes it easier to upgrade the road by material recycling from the ditch and, moreover, the visibility along the road is maintained.The aim of the study was to evaluate what type of chain flail is the best and most cost-effective for removal of different kind of woody vegetation along forest roadsides.Time studies were made on two chain flails when removing woody vegetation in three different classes; easy-, middle- and heavy shrub removal. The studied flails were one light and rather simple flail named Optimal M160 and a heavier and more advanced flail named Slagkraft H210. The removal was made according to Holmen Skogs? specification and the quality of the cleaning was measured by objective belt inventory.The productivity was higher with the heavy flail within all cleaning classes.

Holmen Skog has in some places in their operation area access to timber trucks with centre mounted scrapers. They make transportation more flexible and reduce reliance on contractors for road maintenance. The trucks with centre mounted scrapers have a higher tare weight, making them less productive and therefore they receive compensation with a 0.75 % increase on transportation price. The purpose of this study was to investigate what actions a timber truck with centre mounted scraper can perform with acceptable quality in winter, and to examine if it is an economically profitable solution for the truck operator and charterer. The study was done in three stages; interviews, performance analysis of the transportations carried out and an economic analysis with the help of Sven Erik Gilles spreadsheet tool. The study included the districts Delsbo and Hudiksvall.

To investigate the possibilities for effective soil tillage, that could imply lower costs, lower negative environmental impact and in addition a meaningful occupation for foraging pigs, a field experiment was carried out in Gränna, Småland, during growing season 2006. The experiment contained two treatments that were repeated three times and were carried out on a couch grass-infected fallow on a light soil close to Sweden?s second largest lake, Vättern. Ploughing was one treatment and pig rooting followed by ploughing, was the other. The experiment was conducted according to the guidelines of organic growing and seedbed preparation was done the same way in the two treatments. The pigs, three groups of five half-year old Linderödssvin (an old Swedish breed), was encouraged to perform an even tillage by strip-grazing, i.e.

Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr) is just like Norway spruce (Picea abies) a species in thegenus picea. The natural range of Sitka spruce is a narrow strip along the west coast of North America. Itis the most coastal of all picea species, and very dependent on the mild and humid climate along thepacific coast.Sitka spruce has been grown a long time in the countries around the North Sea, particularly in GreatBritain where it currently is the most important species in British forestry. Sitka spruce has not beenplanted in Swedish forests to any large extent before the storm Gudrun in 2005. Several studies indicatethat the production of wood biomass is higher for Sitka spruce compared to Norway spruce.

The ?civilized? world is in need of fossil fuel in order to function. Hybricon AB is a company in Umeå that is developing a technology that hopefully can reduce parts of this need. They are currently testing their two electrical busses (with Hybrid backup) in city traffic on the roads of Umeå in cooperation with the county of Umeå.                               The busses are originally diesel-busses, but the diesel motor has been replaced with two electrical hub-motors with a power of 145 kW each that are powered by batteries.The batteries are charged at the end station after each route. In case the batteries should run low on capacity during driving, they can be recharged by the so called genset.

This master thesis was performed as a mission from Holmen Skog with the purpose to investigate to which extent their own machine teams and engaged contractors were exposed to theft and vandalism, and most common preventive measures used. With the help of collected data the study should lead to proposals of preventive measures that can help the machine teams in their struggle to minimise theft and vandalism. Theft and vandalism are a big problem for Swedish forest contractors. In a scarce economic situation thefts and vandalism rapidly decrease the profit for the contractors. However, the last years have resulted in a positive awareness of thefts, and more and better preventive measures have been developed. With the initiative of this master thesis, Holmen Skog show that they are aware of the situation and that they wish to take control of the problem. A total amount of 108 questionnaires was sent out to Holmen?s own machine teams and engaged contractors.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify the most important establishment criteria for companies whointend to do a new establishment. There are differences between regions regarding attraction on startup.Some regions have few new businesses while others continuously expanded its activities in variousfields. The biggest focus on the thesis is the Gävle- Borlänge region where MellansvenskaHandelskammaren is active.Mellansvenska Handelskammaren saw a need for the assignment after the magazine ?IntelligentLogistik? ranked the Gävle region at 15:th place and Falun/Borlänge at 20:th place in the list over thetop 25 best logistics locations in Sweden. This made them wonder what could be made to develop intoa better area with more amenities and a better place in the ranking of the magazine.

SUMMARYThe demands on the public environment are big and in particular on the environment of communication which we spend a lot of time in on our way to work, school etc. The city-approach is a road section that leads from the periphery of the city to the centre of the city, often through boring and meaningless industrial areas that displays the back side of the city to the voyager on the city-approach. The intentions of this thesis in landscape architecture has been to study one of the two city-approaches to the city of Luleå, the close surroundings and contextual position in the city and not at least give suggestions of ways how the city-approach can be changed, clarified and improved. The study of the city-approach has been made by studying literature that concern city-approaches and the architecture of roads in general. Studies of different analysis methods has been made to find appropriate approaches to work with the specific study of the city-approach to Luleå.

To guarantee the customers a job satisfactory executed Sydved has been certified by the ISO 14001 standard. One part of the certification is the standards of soil damages. The soil damages were over represented during 1999 and 2000. It was therefore a need to study the problem in order to see what could be done to reduces these damages. A filed study was carried out on 21 subjectively selected stands from the following five districts: Vänersborg, Falköping, Borås, Jönköping and Åseda. As the study is a descriptive study of the soil damages, their character and extension, only stands were tracks were reported were considered.

At present day there are several different methods for measuring of paved surfaces.The most common methods today are measuring with a total station, the GlobalNavigation Satellite System (GNSS) and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS). Recently thedevelopment of unmanned aerial vehicles, known as drones, has increasedexponentially and today there are several ways of using drones for measuring surfacesby photographing and laser scanning.This thesis contains a comparison between the methods terrestrial laser scanning(TLS), and unmanned aerial vehicle photogrammetry (UAV). The measurements havebeen applied on two different test surfaces, one of asphalt and one of gravel. Thepurpose of the comparison is to investigate whether the airborne photogrammetry isequivalent accurate in its height levels as the terrestrial laser scanning. For thecomparison to be more extensive, these two methods have not only been comparedin precision but also in the areas of ease of use and economy.The precision was analyzed by comparing the height levels in randomly placed controlpoints on the test surfaces.

During its lifetime, a road goes through a number of different stages; pre-study,inquiry of the road, work plan, documenting stage, building stage and operatingstage. The operating stage is the one that takes the longest time and costs themost. Those have a tendency of becoming unnecessarily high because the projectengineers don?t always take the management and maintenance prerequisites intoconditions.To decrease the management and maintenance costs, the Swedish RoadAdministration SouthEast has been in need of a work procedure that makes theroaddesign engineers take the management and maintenance of the road intoconsideration. This shall be achieved by a checklist where the most commondesigns that lead to increased management- and maintenance costs are compiledand listed.Through interviews with project leaders in management, the most commonproblems have been identified, analyzed and summarized under the headlineswinter-road, vegetation, road equipment and road designs.To elucidate the problem from several points of view, interviews wereimplemented with project leaders in investment and roaddesign engineers.

This report covers the conceptual design of a new one person hybrid vehicle that is to be fast and convenient to drive on the roads. The vehicle is most of all supposed to be used as a commute vehicle but can also be used at other occasions as well.During the work with this project the group has focused on three larger areas, the outer design (body), wheel chassis and an ergonomically designed interior. The group was not able to just create these parts in 3D to get a trustworthy vehicle, hence number of other components and details were also created to get a better entirety.The outer design starts with idea generation and sketches and ends with a 3D model which is rendered to show how the final product is going to look. The design of the body has been going on during the entire work process due to new ideas and improvements that seemed interesting and had to be changed.The wheel chassis also started with idea generation, research and sketches. It ended up with a simulated 3D model which later on was mounted on the vehicle body to show how the vehicle is going to perform during usage.