According to the Swedish Forestry Act, environmental protection is required within forest operations regardless of forest ownership. This thesis examines the extent to which regulations issued by the National Board of Forestry are implemented in clearcuttings. Different factors contributing to the outcome of environmental protection are analyzed both from a top-down and a bottom-up perspec­tive. Empirically, the study combines field investigation of clearcuts, interviews with implementing actors, and evaluation of written prescriptions and advice on environ­mental protection. The Swedish forest-environmental legislation and implementation process is also compared to that of the U.S. and, especially, to the state of Cali­fornia . Conflicting goals within the Forestry Act and vague environmental guidelines leave the implementing agency officers with great discretion. Steering attempts by the Forestry Agency are in terms of friendly advice and information. No breaches of the regulations were taken to court during 1980-1986 although this is formally possible. There is an average compliance of approximately fifty per cent of the required environmental measures. Aesthetic values are taken into account to a greater extent than pure floristic and faunistic ones. Economic considerations and harvest technology contribute to a low degree of environmental protection. Forest machines are inadequately suited for protecting single, environmentally valuable trees and they frequently cause deep tracks. Inadequate environmental knowledge and insufficient pre-harvest environmental planning also affect environ­mental performance negatively. Generally, economic considerations contribute to the low priority to environ­mental protection given by the implementing actors compared to timber production. Economic inducements counteract environmental protection. It is generally rare that environmentalists and other public interests affected by forest operations are consulted. Environmentalists however influence indirectly through political pressure to legislate, participation in the consultation process before legislation is enacted, and mass-media attention. / digitalisering@umu

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Umeå universitet, 2006. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Our thesis project consists of three architectural interventions: The Mushroom, The Gnat and The Snake, fitting into a vision of a Swedish forest managed in a more sustainable way. A future in which the practice of clear-felling has been abandoned in favor of alternative methods falling under the umbrella term Continuous Cover Forestry (CCF). As the biological aspects of forestry is not our area of expertise, we have investigated what this reorganization at large would mean for the Swedish landscape, economy and society. Where it becomes a question for architecture. When the timber industry looses its hegemony over the forest, the forest becomes available to different uses. For life and recreation, and for the production of forest goods other than timber, such as wild game meat, berries, and mushrooms. These activities are able to take place within the same space as forestry, thereby overcoming the spatial separation of functions we see today. Our interventions work by docking onto different points of today’s logistics flow, in order to later replace them. They take into account more of the different values and users of the forest which we have identified. The project follows the flow of goods from the forest as they make their way towards the larger markets. The Mushroom is an outpost in the middle of the productive forest which supplies the surrounding area with the necessary infrastructure in order to extract goods from it, doubling as a recreational dwelling. One of these can be placed every 30 km. The Gnat is a tower structure containing multiple different functions ranging from marking the pick-up spot for the harvested timber, functioning as a hunting tower, shelter and storage. Many of them are placed along forest roads. The Snake is a local processing plant managing small-scale refinement of the goods of the forest close to their site of harvest, thus channeling some of the economical flow back to the communities living of the forest. Together they form a complete series of infrastructure demonstrating how we could organize the future Swedish forest.