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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2005

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Abstract

SNS-meeting 2004 in Nordic Forest Inventory was held at Sjusjøen, Norway, September 6-8, 2004. This publication is a collection of all the subjects dealt with at the meeting. The articles are written by the speakers on the meeting. The subjects were country and team reports, lidar measurements in forest inventory, national forest inventory, remote sensing studies, forest planning and current topics in forest modelling.

Abstract

Entrepreneurship can be defined as the process of transformation of new economic opportunities into values in the markets. It has become the engine of economic and social development throughout the world. Rural areas have some fundamental disadvantages for enterprises and entrepreneurship: they provide less skilled labor, less non-traded inputs to industry and at a higher cost, and finally but perhaps most importantly, rural areas are less attractive in terms of access to knowledge and information than concentrations of industries and population.Often the actions for new entrepreneurship in rural areas are targeted to the production and use of natural resources e.g. in agriculture, fishery, forestry, processing and nature-based tourism. Rural areas also have some fundamental advantages for enterprises and entrepreneurship as they provide cheap location for the enterprises, good quality of life for the employees and reliable unskilled labor.Entrepreneurship policies can be divided into policies that support the demand or supply for entrepreneurial activities.The (i) demand side policies aim to elaborate the opportunities to engage actors in entrepreneurial activity. They include, for example, deregulation of entry in the markets, privatization of public services and promotion of firm linkages or clustering. The (ii) supply side policies focus on promoting the capabilities of individuals and firms and facilitating access to resources, for example, via education and training, incubators, micro-credits and other financial incentives and various promo-campaigns. Entrepreneurship policy can also (iii) change the risk-reward profile of an entrepreneur by shaping taxes, subsidies, labor market rules and bankruptcy regulations. The aim of this paper is to consolidate the knowledge on the applied entrepreneurship policies (i-iii) in forestry in Finland, Norway, Japan, Australia, the Philippines and the United States. Aside this, the paper aims for identifying research needs and gaps of knowledge on forest sector entrepreneurship to suggest approaches for future research.

Abstract

Up to ca. 1960, the forest sector was the largest export sector in Norway. Since then its importance has decreased, until in 2003 the export value totalled only 2,5 % of the export sector. The import of forest products constituted a relatively higher share of the total import value than the export (about 3,3%). Pulp and paper, mainly newsprint, is the most important export product. The annual cut has declined 30 per cent over the last decade and in 2003 totalled about 7.5 million cubic metres. The reasons for this decline are not fully understood, but changes in ownership structure, low unemployment rates and good job opportunities outside of the forest sector and the abolition of cost-share programs are certainly some of the explanation. Private non industrial owners own 78,5 % of the forest area and the average size of a forest property is 57 hectares. Almost all fellings are certified, and there is an intensive ongoing debate on the need for protection of a larger forest area. There is a large potential for developing non-wood products and services, and the forest owners association have companies and organisations dealing with this. There is a demand from both domestic and foreign customers for non-wood products and services but the cooperation with the domestic tourist industry still has to be improved to coordinate this effectively. There is a weak entrepreneurship culture in the forest products industry, with a few regional exceptions. The culture is mainly production oriented and market competence and international orientation is needed. Compared with other industries in Norway the level of education is low in the forest products industry. A large public program was started in 2002 to stimulate innovation and competence building activities in the forest products sector.

Abstract

Heart- and sapwood demonstrates different wood quality features which should be taken into account when deciding how to make use of each single trunk. To analyse heartwood relations, radial cores were sampled from ten trunks and one thousand trees in four gymnosperm species from the European Alps, covering a wide variety of growth conditions. The objective was to test whether the simple and straightforward model denoted the heartwood age rule (HAR) would give an adequate description of the observed heartwood - age relations in these species. In this paper, preliminary results are reported, confirming the validity of HAR: For each of the species, the number of heartwood rings equals the square root of the cambial age less a constant parameter, to the second power. The parameter evaluated to (valid cambial age rang in brackets): 3.31 (up to 220 years) for Scots pine; 1.28 (up to 270 years) for larch; 1.47 (up to 490 years) for stone pine; and 1.10 (up to 110 years) for yew. The explained part of the variance in the square root transformed observations of heartwood rings was 90-99%. For the examined specimens, HAR applied to observations at breast height as well as along single trunks from base to top, irrespective within or beneath the living crown. The findings confirm former reports and enhance the application of HAR to a wider geographic area and to new species. The results should suitably be incorporated in wood quality models.