Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

In the Swedish forest, there are plenty of ancient and cultural monuments. They are protected through the Swedish law, and may not be damaged or destroyed. Through planning the forest companies try to discover and mark out all the monuments before the forestry measures are implemented. Despite this, studies show that ancient and cultural monuments are damaged every year.
The purpose of this report is to investigate the importance of education and experience for inventory and planning of forest land. A field study has been conducted in which three groups with different levels of experience and expertise (education) have inventoried an area of forest that’s been planned for a regeneration felling. The three groups where archaeologist, forest planners and students of the bachelor of Science in forest management.
An analysis of the participants registered monuments has been carried out and it shows that the archaeologist is the group that finds most of monuments. Among the forest planners, it seemed that those who had the most experience also registered most of the monuments. The student group who had received a short course in how to find monuments before the study, were almost at the same level that the forest planners who had less experience.
The conclusion is that there are quite clear trends in that the participants with the most experience and the participants with best education, have also been the ones who discovered the most ancient- and cultural monuments.