The article reviews the position of the Department of Forest Technology in Finnish Forest Research Institute, among Finnish establishments in research on forest work. In addition, it describes the current research programmes of the departments both in wood harvesting studies and studies on silvicultural work. The equitable aims of the former are to increase productivity, lower the cost level, ease the work and improve job satisfaction, as well as to improve the utilization of wood raw material. The latter aims at e.g. improvement of the biological results.
Future prospects are surveyed from the point of view of the goals imposed by the State on the research and, on other hand, the appropriations earmarked for forest work science. A regrettable conflict has arisen between them.
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The utilization of stump and root wood is analysed in this paper on the basis of literature from middle of 19th century to the present date. According to the information available, the utilization of pine stumps in tar production was small compared to that of peeled Scots pine stemwood in the 19th century. During the 1st and 2nd World War the utilization of stumps for tar production reached its highest levels. Other industrial utilization of stumps has been small up to the present time but now stumps are beginning to be used in the pulp industry.
The greatest amounts of stumps have been utilized by the rural population. Stumps were used as fuel. In the thirties, the yearly amount used was over 200,000 m3 (solid measure), and even in the sixties over 100,00 m3. No industrial utilization method has yet reached these levels.
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The study sought to establish, whether a connection between forest ownership changes and regional differentiation process exists. Data were collected by interviewing fifty persons representing regional planning and forestry. In 1969–72 forest land area owned by the farmers decreased by some 600,000–700,000 hectares. The new owners were non-farmers (400,000–500,000 ha) and the State and forest industry companies (200,000 ha). These figures indicate a possibility for a reduction in the livelihood of rural developing regions in three ways: money incomes with their multiplier effects decrease, possibilities of the rationalization of farming decrease and the population confidence in the future diminishes.
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The material of this study consists of 1,080 Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) saw logs measures in two saw mills in Northern Finland. The largest and the smallest top-diameter of each log was measured under bark. According to the results, the ovalness was rather small, 1 mm or 4.9% on average. On the other hand, only 14.3% of all logs showed a diameter difference smaller than 2%. The ovalness was larger than 10% in 5.8% of all logs.
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