This Masters thesis is performed at the request of the National Board of Forestry in order to investigate how the Swedish municipalities use their forests. The study is of general character with emphasis on the social values of the forests. The municipalities? purposes with their forests have varied over time, but lately the social aspects have been recognised as interesting. The social values of the forests can be defined as the values from the forests that contribute to the wealth of humans. This has socio-economic importance for the municipalities. The study was performed as a quantitative questionnaire survey, complemented with qualitative interviews.

The use of chainsaws in both private forestry and commercial companies is highly associated with personal injuries and accidents with deadly outcome. As a result to this, a driver?s license for chainsaws was presented in the year 2005. To get the license you have to attend a course given by the Swedish forest Agency or one of several private educators. This study is an evaluation of one course given by the Swedish forest Agency in Uppsala.

Along with other European farmland birds, the skylark (Alauda arvensis) has declined rapidly since the 1970?s. Between 1975 and 2003, the Swedish population of skylarks declined with 64 %. In Britain, the decline is often explained by alterations in farming practices in general and the shift from spring-sown to winter-sown cereals in particular. The dense vegetation structure of winter cereals is limiting the number of breeding attempts possible, causing the entire population to decline.

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.

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.

The purpose of Älvdalens besparingsskog is to develop the district and most of all the forestry in Älvdalen. It's owned by about 2 300 private forest owners who's landed properties are located in Älvdalen. Every year the besparingsskogen gives out a lot of its profit in form different types of subsidies for agriculture and forestry. The owners can apply for subsidies for several of the costs that occur in forestry. During the period 2000-2003 the owners are offered forest management plans and pcSKOG-gård at no cost for their private forest properties. The purpose of this master's thesis was to find out if the activity in the forestry changed when the forest owners got new forest management plans and the computer program pcSKOG-gård.

Aspen (Populus tremula) is a tree that is important for biodiversity. It is a pioneer tree that is favored by much light. It is possible that aspens that regenerated on agricultural land have a different importance for biodiversity than aspens that regenerated in forests, since their conditions have been different. By studying how the land use have changed you can see how many of today?s aspens regeneretad on agricultural land.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how nearby forests affect the energy production in wind turbines. To reach the purpose a case study is performed on three wind turbines sited on a field in a north-south line at Andersfält in the municipality of Halmstad, Sweden. Approximately 100 meters south of the southern wind turbine a forest is situated. The case study is divided into three sub studies where the difference in energy production, the affect of the forest and a wind meteorology model, WAsP, is studied. The result show that the forest have a significant influence and that the WAsP-model gives an incorrect result of the energy production in wind turbines sited near a forest..

Vallentuna municipality in Stockholm County, is planning to develop a management plan for a forest area owned by the municipality. The property is an urban forest and the hiking trail Roslagsleden runs through it. Hence the municipality intends to take extra care of the outdoor recreation interests, as well as forest biodiversity, but at the same time use the area for forestry. This study discusses how these three interests, recreation, biodiversity and forestry, differ in their views of how a forest should be managed, where they disagree and how they can coexist in the management of this area. In this study, a vegetation mapping of the area and an assessment of the forest?s conservation values was carried out.

During the twenty-first century the price of forest land in Sweden has increased heavily. Buying forest land has become more common and the stakeholders have grown in number. The countries around Sweden have through the globalization become connected in the market of round wood and wood products. The price of forest land and round wood are also close connected. The goal with this report is to make a comparison of forest land prices between Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Estonia and Latvia and to see how the prices have developed in the period 2000-2011. The prime factor in the comparison, except the direct price difference between the countries, is the round wood prices. The round wood prices give information about the economic situation in the countries and play an important role in the return on the forest land. The prices of forest land shifts heavily between the countries.

Acidification is a central concept in the environmental debate. The effect of acidification of the soil is a matter of a decreasing amount of cations and thereby a decreasing ability to resist a supply of hydrogen ions to the soil. Acidification has gradually increased in the O horizon in Västerbotten over a 30-year period from the 1970th to the 1990th. The aim of this study was from inventories of The Swedish National Forest Soil Survey and The Swedish National Forest Inventory explain and quantify the acidification that has occurred in the O horizon of two regions in the north of Sweden. Data from SMHI, The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, has also been used.

This master thesis has three purposes. The first purpose is to give a theoretical background of how to divide up forest estates and to study how the legal system for these matters works. A literature study has been carried out to give the background and a theoretical model has been made for analysing the law cases. The first purpose also partly touched the decision process in dividing up forest estates from point of view of the law of land parcelling (FBL), point of view. The second purpose is to examine effects of a change of production requirements in 3 cap.7 § FBL as regards dividing up forest estates of private forest owners.

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..

Bergvik Skog is one of the leading forest companies in Sweden who use airborne laser scanning for forestry information. They utilize laser data retrieved by the Swedish National Land Survey to describe the forest holdings and facilitate planning for thinning and final felling operations. However, the possibility to identify stands with clearing needs by using laser scanning data has not been tested in a large scale. The data used in the current study are field data from The Swedish National Forest Inventory in combination with laser data from the Swedish National Land Survey acquired in 2009. The collected data is used to find one or several laser variables that best describe the relationship of the field measured samples with clearing needs.

FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) is the major form of certification system in Swedish forestry today and its more than 11 million hectares are covering almost half of the total productive forest area in the country. Its regulations prescribe that at least 10 wind firm trees should be left behind after every clear cutting operation. This study have taken place on 30 recently clearcut objects in Bergslagen, Sweden, were an inventory of the standing stock have been made. The research shows that, with 90 % security, the retained trees together contain 9-13 m3sk per hectare. Pine is the dominant tree and it covers more than half the numbers of retained trees and its volume cover 65 % of the retained trees total volume. Spruce is on second place with 30 % of the retained trees, but only 21 % of the standing stock.