Patvinsuo National Park

Hi everybody,

Since we are in Eastern Finland let's use the opportunities of using great local nature. One of the destinations could be Patvinsuo National Park, which is located in two municipalities - Lieksa and Ilomantsi.

Eastern Finland, Region of North Karelia
Municipalities of Lieksa (www.lieksa.fi, in Finnish) and Ilomantsi (www.ilomantsi.fi, in Finnish)
Area: 105 sq. km. Established in 1982.
The area is managed by Metsähallitus.

 

More information about the National Park can be found from http://www.outdoors.fi/destinations/nationalparks/patvinsuo/Pages/Default.aspx

 

You can always print and take a brochure about this beautiful place at http://julkaisut.metsa.fi/assets/pdf/lp/Esitteet/patvinsuoeng.pdf

 

Patvinsuo is just perfect place for hiking.

The park has about 80 km of well marked trails, including 20 km of duckboard trails. The most popular trail is the Suomunkierto Trail (15 km around). Three shorter nature trails, Kuusipolku, Mäntypolku and Lakkapolku (3-4,5km), are also suitable for children. Hikers can also follow trails

leading from the park to the longer Bear Trail (138km) and Wolf Trail (90km).

But if you want to get more experience in Patvinsuo I would advise you to take services from Esa Mukku, who is excellent expert of the area. More details see on the webpage of his company http://www.caret.fi/ 

Summer is over, but the new semester has started

Hello everyone,

Hopefully you have had a nice and enjoyable  summer. At least those who have spent summer in Finland probably noticed very low number of mosquitoes. It has been a great pleasure to be outside most of the time during the summer. It was due to low precipitation level, this summer had relatively low level of precipitation.

Now back to business! Those of you who would start your study year in University of Eastern Finland, School of Forest Sciences would be some more information. Mr. Markku Ropo who is acting as international student advisor has published more information for newcomers.

Additional information can be found on  http://www.uef.fi/metsa (Finnish and English version)

• School of Forest Sciences accounts for 90 staff, 10 professors and 50 researchers. Moreover about 35 students are accepted annually to degree studies, plus about 20 for three English language degree studies. Exchange students for the programme "Environmental Science and Forestry" for year 2013-2014 came from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Fran­ce, Ger­many, Ghana, Italy, Latvia, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Spain and UK

                     

School of Forest Sciences has the following directions of research:

                    

• Silviculture

•  Bioenergy

•  Forest Soil Science

• Forest Protection

•  Forest Ecology

• Forest Technology

• Forest  Products Technology

•  Wood Material Science

•  Forest Management Planning

• Forest  Mensuration               

• Forest  Information Systems

• Forest  Economics and Politics

• International Forestry

• Life Cycle Assessment, Sustainable Use of Natural Resources

• Forest Sector Foresight

                      

Participation in international forestry exhibition Interles, Part II

Dear all,

Continuing with Interles exhibition...Besides official programme for the first time it had combined show organized by STIHL. Exhibitors and visitors of the leading forestry exhibition Interles: Karelia in Petrozavodsk has witnessed the outstanding and dynamic professional show - the world's best woodsmen for the first time in Russia will show their skills in the exhibition performance STIHL^® TIMBERSPORTS^® SERIES.

The history of the show comes back to 1985, STIHL which is the owner of America's leading brand of portable petrol engine tools demonstrated traditional logging methods transformed into original extreme sport competition to a wide audience for the first time. After a little time this competition gained popularity among professionals and amateurs, and began to assemble the worlds best lumberjack athletes under the name of STIHL^® TIMBERSPORTS^® Series.

For presentation of the programme in Russia, the exhibition Interles: Karelia was chosen - the only Russian professional logging event to demonstrate logging, road construction equipment and vehicles in operation in the field.

Athletes compete in several disciplines related to the use of traditional logging methods. The disciplines include:

• Cutting with a customised super powerful chainsaw - more than 60 horsepower (Hot Saw),
• Cutting with a single man cross-cut saw made of a special steel, length of about 2 meters (Single Buck),
• Chopping a tree trunk at a height (Springboard Chop),
• Chopping a vertical log (Standing Block Chop),
• Cutting with a stock chain saw (Stock Saw) and chopping through a lying log (Underhand Chop).

Those stuff very extremely nice!!! 

In addition to that during the exhibition the competition of best loggers in Karelia took place. Where 10 best competitors were showing their professional skills.

Finally we had a pleasure to present our poster and distribute the material about the project which called “Intergated landscape planning for sustainable use of nature resources and maintaining biodirversity”

Have a nice summer everyone!!!

Participation in international forestry exhibition Interles, Part I

Hello everyone,

Summer is here already in Petrozavodsk, since I am not in Joensuu this week and participating in International Forestry Exhibition in the capital of Republic of Karelia in Petrozavodsk. Temperature is just fine, however it is even too hot in here, Monday and Tuesday it was close to 30 degrees, and almost no wind at all.

 Let's come back to the agenda of the exhibition, here are some points which were covered during the plenary session and round table:

-          Use of forest resources in the development of bioenergy  as factor increasing the role of forestry  complex:

o   Tendencies towards wood utilization in energy sector

o   Recycling of wood wastes

o   Use of low-quality wood and wood wastes in bioenergy development as a tool to solve social problems

-          Transportation infrastructure in forest sector: effective technologies and mechanisms of state and public partnership in wood roads construction and exploitation.

-          Major tasks of reforestation: forest selection, forest genetics, improvement of technologies for production of planting materials

o   Infrastructure, problems of haulage roads, “going deeper in the wood, but how?”

o   Introduction of new technologies and modern equipment/machinery as a necessary requirement for a breakthrough

-          New clauses in the EU and the US laws and regulations on timber trade. Are Russian enterprises ready to meet the requirements of external market?

o   Voluntary certification as an important prerequisite for competitiveness

There were many speakers from different organizations: A.P. Hudilainen – Head of the Republic of Karelia (however we did not hear his speech), N.S. Krotov – Deputy Director of Federal Forestry Agency, V.F. Chikalyuk – Minister of Natural Resources and Environment of the Republic of Karelia, Pasi Poikonen – Finnish Forest Research Institute (METLA), A.I. Karpilovich – Head of Forestry Department of the North-western Federal District, A.I. Soroka – Director of FSUE Roslesinforg branch, Karellesproekt, N.V. Senko – General Director, Ladenso JSC, B.D. Romanyuk – Chief of SPFRI Laboratory, I.V. Verveyko – Deputy Forest Strategy Director, Ilim Group, N. Shmatkov –WWF Russia Forest Programme.

The most hot topic in Russian forestry based on plenary session speakers are forest fires, its prevention and monitoring; intensification of forest management, approaches to forest inventory; national forest inventory and other topics.

Spring semester is over

Hello everyone,

As you probably noticed the coridors of university buildings are almost empty. this is an indication that that all the courses are ended. As you have observed the weather is pretty good these days and  summer is heading towards.

Except Vappu in May is Morther's Day (12th). Mother’s Day is a day for many people to show their appreciation towards mothers and mother figures worldwide. It is an annual event but is held at different dates in the calendar, depending on the country. It is a day of many expectation, and you can prepare something special for your Mother. As a tradition the Mothers are invited to restaurant, that is the way how many family members pay respect to them.

And Snellman's Day is also celebrated, he is one of the early builders of what would later become the independent  Finnish state. He was very active in 1850s and 1860s in Finland, when Snellman was active in the cabinet of Senate in Finland. As a result  the introduction of a separate Finnish currency, the "markka", in 1865, that came to be of the utmost value for Finland. More information about Morther's and Snellman's Day could be found from wiki.

Have a nice summer!