Forest Management
Course material
Ólafur Eggertsson
Introduction to wood anatomy and wood quality
This slideshow is in English and deals with where trees come from and what they need for growth and maintenance, their characteristics and structure. It is about what wood really is, the structure of wood, annual rings, wood cells and wood fibers. Also about the properties and utilization of the wood.
Bent Jensen
Planting and maintenance of production fores
This slideshow is in English and is about why we plant forests, where and for what purpose and tells how we can achieve the highest quality by deciding at the beginning
what we expect at the end.
Ólafur Eggertsson
Gæði alaskaaspar
This slideshow is in English and is a description of the origin of the Alaskan Poplar, its features and characteristics. Also the results of testing whether it could be used as a structural timber.
Ólafur Eggertsson
The forest history of Iceland
This slideshow slideshow is in English and Icelandic and starts with the formation of Iceland 30 million years ago, the flora and environment then and until present time.
Harald Sall
Sweden forestry
This slideshow is in English and starts with the ice sheet covering a part of Sweden 14000 years ago, the first farmers 6000 years ago. How the land owners reformed in the Middle Ages and cultivation shifts.
About Forest authorities and organizations; Forest owner categories; Small and large-scale sawmills, Pulp industry.
About
This project aims to create the foundation for an emerging small-scale, forest-based industry in Iceland by learning from experiences of other Scandinavian partners.
The Agricultural University of Iceland and the Iceland Forest Service have followed closely the forest development in Iceland over past decades. The history of forestry in Iceland is rather short since the first woods were only planted about 100 years ago. But growing timber for harvesting only began around the 1980s, when farmers started planned forestry with governmental support schemes.
Today – 40 years later it has become an urgent matter to formulate and implement coordinated quality assessment guides for the main tree species used in Icelandic forestry.
The creation of wood-processing knowledge on an Iceland-specific level will be the foundation to kick off this development. Wider possibilities of using Icelandic quality timber will also serve to make the forest industry more sustainable. Therefore a main outcome of this innovative project will be to build up wood-processing education in Iceland and furthermore transfer and adapt existing European timber standards to Icelandic circumstances in close cooperation with experienced partners from countries with a long wood processing history (Sweden and Denmark).
The exciting training and teaching materials from Denmark and Sweden will be updated and adapted to Icelandic circumstances. All of the materials will be adjusted to digital learning principles.
Further project outcome will be the revision of a curriculum that enables the transfer of Icelandic lessons learned from kickstarting commercial timberlands to third countries who are facing similar challenges.