The demand for renewable energy is increasing in Sweden. This consequently increases the pressure for and willingness to pay for forest fuels. One method to extract forest fuel from suitable commercial Thinnings is the "long top method? (LT-method). With this method saw logs and non-delimbed tops are recovered, i.e.

This master thesis project is a part of a project called ?Järboprojektet? at the regional board of forestry, the district of Gästrikland. The project will give answers to questions regarding if an analysis of satellite images can be used to contact and inform landowners of the located areas where precommercial Thinning is useful. The whole project is a part of the National Board of Forestrys IT-stake where the analysis of satellite images will, at the latitudes possible, be adapted to each district in purpose to identify these areas in need of precommercial Thinning. This master thesis project is based on a field inventory of identified objects where precommercial Thinning is useful.

Many participants in the Swedish timber market procure raw material from private forest owners. They often also offer forest services to ensure reforestation after final felling. Selling silviculture services can be a part of creating a long term relationship with the landowner for future timber purchases. The Swedish Forest Agency monitors forest rejuvenation results in the entire country. In the latest survey (2006 - 2008) the proportion of approved regeneration area was 78%.

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.

A high quality is highly requested in today?s Thinnings, since these are the base for continued value development of the forests. Thinning quality often means a minimization of damages on soil, stems and roots during the cutting. One way to reach a high quality is to set up goals that will be followed up after the cutting is made. Self-checking gives information of the machine drivers work and guarantees the customers a good quality of work.

In forestry there are always needs of forest data to make good strategic decisions of different actions and economic winning. Usually this data gets from field-estimations made by forest workers with expensive costs and sometimes unsatisfied quality. StoraEnso Skog is a great forest company in Sweden and they have part of the responsibility of the forest own by Bergvik Skog. Bergvik Skog is owner of 1, 9 million hectares productive forest land. Both Bergvik and StoraEnso have great interest in new inventory techniques to get the important forest data. The company Foran Remote Sensing offers the opportunity with airborne laserscanning of forest and forest land. Foran got the mission of Bergvik and StoraEnso to laser scan Bergviks possession in Älvdalen, Dalarna.

Successful forest regeneration is a prerequisite for sustainable forest management. Therefore, it is important to prevent browsing damage on the commercially important tree species Scots pine. In this study I have tested a new alternative way to increase the available amount of forage and increase the use of these resources by especially moose. The method is based on a slash treatment at harvest, where the accessibility of slash as forage is increased during final felling or commercial Thinning by gathering the slash and putting the Scots pine slash on top of the slash piles. This study has compared the availability of forage, the amount of browsed biomass and the number of fecal pellet groups between conventional and slash treated stands after final felling and commercial Thinning in southern Sweden.

This report is a B.Sc. Forestry thesis work at the school for Forest Management, SLU. The work was an assignment from the forest owners? association Mellanskog. The aim of the work where to investigate the economical result of removing undergrowth trees before first Thinning, and a follow-up of the contractors and their compliance with Mellanskog standards. This thesis work was divided in three parts: The first was to find a relation between the net volume from the first Thinning and the cost of cleaning undergrowth trees. Secondly there was a follow-up in the field, to investigate whether the contractors have done the undergrowth cleaning according to Mellanskog?s directives.

This report is a B.Sc. Forestry thesis work at the school for Forest Management, SLU. The work was an assignment from the forest owners? association Mellanskog. The aim of the work where to investigate the economical result of removing undergrowth trees before first Thinning, and a follow-up of the contractors and their compliance with Mellanskog standards. This thesis work was divided in three parts: The first was to find a relation between the net volume from the first Thinning and the cost of cleaning undergrowth trees. Secondly there was a follow-up in the field, to investigate whether the contractors have done the undergrowth cleaning according to Mellanskog?s directives.

The storm Gudrun January 8-9 2005 felled about 70 millions cubic metres forest in southern Sweden. The majority of the wind damaged forest was spruce (Picea abies). In order to decrease the risk of wind damages in the future other trees species are of interest for forestry in southern Sweden. The purpose of this master thesis was to study if larch were more wind tolerant than spruce. The method was to compare larch, Japanese larch (Larix kaempferi Lamb.), European larch (L.

SCA Skog has taken the initiative to this Master?s thesis. Today SCA Skog has a great need to update their informtion on young forest stands across large areas. Traditional field inventory methods for updating stand databases are expensive and time consuming. However, the inventory could be made more efficient if stand boundaries and stand characteristics are derived from aerial photographs.

Root rot causes large economical losses for Swedish forestry. The spread of root rot can partly be prevented by treating the spruce stumps in Thinnings. Late pre-commercial Thinning (PCT) is one of the forestry measures where stump treatment is not used. Late PCT can be defined as: The act of cleaning the stand with the aim of improving accessibility and sight within the stand, and so to increase the mean stem´s volume during the first conventional Thinning. The aim of this study was to examine how late PCT is performed, its spatial extent and if it aids the spreading of root rot. The study was limited to encompass late PCT before first conventional Thinnings in spruce stands in southern Sweden. Samples of spruce stumps were taken from four stands where late PTC had been carried out.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the economic effects of different fertilization programs both on stand- and forest-level. The study is applied on an objective sample of inventory data for a forest area in Kalix in northern Sweden. The forest area belongs to the forest company Sveaskog. The study includes different economic models and will be used as a support when the company decides how to invest and how much to invest in fertilization. The study investigates the economy of five different fertilization policies. For each program the rate of interest invested in fertilization and the cost for the extra produced volume has been calculated.

This study is done together with Sydved AB in the summer of 2012. The purpose of the study is to analyse how different quantity of assortments influence the production for forwarders and harvesters with multiple tree handling aggregate in Thinning, by different tree volumes. To make this analyse a time study was performed where three entrepreneurs work has been analysed. Beside the analyse, of different quantity of assortments, has also been analysed how the tree volume and a forest fuel assortment effect the production. The result of this study shows that the quantities of assortments have a significant meaning for the production. The biggest differences are most distinct between one and three assortments in the smaller tree volumes where production goes down if the quantity of assortments increase.