After independence, Finnish state wanted to procede the use of natural resources by establishing stateowned companies. To exploid the natural resources from perifery some new settlements were established to ensure the amount of labour. The settlement policy after the 2nd World War also supported the establishment of small farms in perifery. In the 60's the policy changed to favor bigger farmunits and slowly machines began replace men. Since that the number of inhabitants in the countryside has decreased. All this has had and has an influence to the landscape.

The aim of this study is to find out the trends and changes in the landuse during this century. Demographic data and changes in means of living is to be combined with the changes in the landuse. In same places where this study is situated there are also several ecological studies made or going on. The general aim of these other studies is to give information about the biodiversity of each site. When this landuse research is combined with biodiversity studies can some information from the relation between landuse and biodiversity be obtained. Like, what kind on landuse produces diverse/poor areas, what is the meaning of neighbouring areas to diversity of a certain place.

Landuse research a cooperation project with the Archipelago Biosphere Reserve in Finland, with West-Estonian Archipelago Biosphere Reserve and with Karelian Research Center. In each place has two of more areas been chosen as study areas. The area under research in Russia is situated in Tolvajфrvi.

In North Karelian Biosphere Reserve there were chosen two forest areas and two villages to be the studied areas. Lahnavaara forest area was chosen because it is interesting from the turistic viewpoint, the easternmost point of European Union is situated here. In Lahnavaaras there are still some old growth forests left where Biosphere Reserve has done organism studies in order to clarify the value of the forest in this sense. Syvфjфrvi forest area was also chosen. In this area there are also some old growth forests left and there are also several organism studies made.

Village areas of Sonkaja and Hattuvaara were chosen in order to support the development on the villages. Sonkaja is also a landscapearea of national importance and the inhabitants of Sonkaja are finding out the history of village. Landuse research can be used directly also in this project.

In the field work different landuses were devided to 53 classes. In practice the work was done by checking out each homogenous site bigger than 20 x 20 meters. Three main categories were natural, managed and cultural. Under these were main classes, like in natural: forests, mires, waters and meadows. These classes were further devided to subclasses, like with forest after its age and treespecies. Earlier landuse is to be find out from old aerial pictures, maps and forestrymaps.