Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Land consolidation is a major problem in many countries in Europe. In Sweden, mainly the state of Dalarna, there is a strong consolidation of forestland, probably the strongest in all of Europe. The consolidation is a big obstacle for forest management and ownership questions due to the often long and narrow strips of land. One of the main reasons for land consolidation in Dalarna results from the heritage procedure, were land is divided between all of the inheritors.
To improve the consolidation large surveys in the consolidated villages in Dalarna are carried out. Many laws have to be followed due to the survey. Three types of criteria have to be achieved before the survey can start, these three criterias are: The cost-income criteria, the improvement criteria and the opinion criteria. The main question with this work is to investigate the cost-income criteria. There is a calculation done before the survey can start, to show if the income is larger than the cost of the improvement of the consolidation, if that’s the case the survey can be carried out. Tract sizes and the grade of cooperation in forest work is a main question that is used in the calculation. These two things have been investigated.
The investigated area has been Djura parish in Leksand´s municipality and Gagnef´s- and Mockfjärd´s parishes in Gagnef´s municipality over the years between 1991 to 1993 and 2010 to 2011. The work has been carried out at the Private forest owner association, Mellanskog. The results point to an increase of tract sizes and a decrease of cooperation after the survey has taken place.