Supervisor team: Göran Hallsby (Forest ecology and management), Jonas Bohlin (Forest resource
management), Petter Axelsson, Anne-Maarit Hekkala (Wildlife, fish and environmental studies),
Daniel Lussetti (Forest ecology and management).

This is a thesis proposition with options for a number of thesis projects. The suggested themes (1-3
below) stem from a 15 year old field trial regarding suitable regeneration approaches for different
management objectives. The proposition offers various research aspects including remote sensing,
spatial data analysis, vegetation diversity, forest resilience, growth and yield, social values, game
management and forestry planning. Interested candidates are encouraged to develop a personal
perspective on the topic and contact any member of the supervisor team to discuss how these ideas
could be developed into a thesis plan.
A brief outline of the trial design and some preliminary data from the young stands are provided in the
appendix. Thesis projects will require additional data collection from the trial site and from other
experiments or contemporary forest regeneration sites.

Theme 1: How to measure reforestation success – criteria and indicators for multiple
goods and services.

Reforestation is a fundamental commitment for sustainable forestry. In countries where sustained
yield of wood raw material is prioritized, forestry regulations typically include regeneration standards
and prescriptions for their fulfilment. Prescriptions and standards used in rotation forestry normally
focus on regrowth promptness, desired (commercial) species density and stocking, and on the
competitiveness/vitality of future crop trees. It could be argued that data currently collected to
evaluate regeneration success miss vital information to forecast the potential development of forest
goods and services in addition to industrial wood raw material. Which other young stand traits should
be considered and how might these variables be collected and assessed?

Theme 2: Target oriented regeneration measures

In forested landscapes, artificially regenerated clear-cuts also hold substantial numbers of seedlings
and saplings from local vegetative and/or seed sourced origins. Depending on location, site conditions
and the intensity of management operations the naturally regenerated stems could potentially account
for a considerable part of the production stand. This theme deals with the efficacy, expedience and
profitability of various regeneration intensities for alternative management objectives. Could current
regeneration prescriptions be applied with more precision and better adapted to various forest owners’
alternative goals?

Theme 3: Can spatial data analyses and remote sensing sources provide useful
decision support for regeneration planning?

During recent decades final harvesting operations have evolved to include clear cuts with more
residual trees, buffer zones and voluntary set asides. The set-asides and residual stems affect both
microclimate and regeneration sources on the harvested sites which could impact the structure and
composition of the next forest generation. As the number and resolution of spatial data sources
increase, more information could be extracted and used in final harvest and regeneration planning for
individual sites. Is it possible to correlate surrounding forest properties, as accounted for in available
spatial data (eg. distance to forest edge, aspect, depth to ground water, species and size of residual
trees) to the structure and composition of regenerating stands on clear cuts?

Förslag Examensarbeten Bäcksjön.pdf