Research suggests that society's vulnerability to natural disasters along coasts could increase as a result of climate change, which is likely to lead to elevated sea levels and possibly an increase in the occurance of meteorological phenomena such as storms and tropical cyclones. Following the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, both of which received considerable media attention, empirical data has indicated that coastal vegetation might be able to protect and reduce damages to coastal communities during tsunami events and tropical cyclones.The aim of the essay has been to study the function of coastal ecosystems as protection against tsunami waves and storms from a risk management perspective, meaning that I have, through an overview of scientific articles, compiled current research on how coastal ecosystems can attenuate storm surges and tsunami waves, and analysed how this knowledge can be put into practice in coastal communities from a risk management perspective, i.e. if coastal ecosystems are a viable risk reduction measure, are practically applicable, and if so, how they could be applied.There is empirical evidence suggesting that coastal ecosystems, particularly mangroves, can reduce the strength of a tsunami wave, but full scientific consensus on this issue has not yet been reached. With regard to protection against storm surges, there is extensive scientific evidence that coastal vegetation can mitigate damages and reduce the height of a storm surge, although the wave has to traverse several kilometres inland through thick vegetation for the protection to be effective. A synthesis in the form of a figure regarding the many physical factors that influence wave development through coastal ecosystems has been created in an attempt to simplify and explain the phenomenon.The conservation and restoration of coastal ecosystems can be justified from a risk management perspective, but planting new forest belts for the purpose of disaster mitigation is quite unrealistic and can rarely be sustainable, since, for protection to be effective, the forest belt must extend several kilometres inland from the coast, and would thus likely prove difficult to implement along coastal societies..

This qualitative study examines how emergency people are framed in Swedish evening-, and local newspapers during the forest fire in Va?stmanland, Sweden 2014. The study also includes if there is any difference between the framing due to the location of the newspaper. The study is based on qualitative text analysis. The theoretical basis is representation, framing theory, media image, media logic and a few conceptions from crisis communication theory.

AbstractAccording to several researchers finance is scarce, scarcer for small businesses than for big enterprises. Small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, that want to start exporting and sales or manufacturing abroad need capital to get ready. Which capital structure and financial costs do they have, and which forms of finance do they actually use for that purpose. New american research by Mansi, Reeb (2002) has suggested, that there is a positive connection between leverage and a negative one between financial costs and internationalization, and that a non-linear model better describes this connection.This study has gathered data in two ways: Through a questionnaire from 37 SMEs and balance sheet figures from totally 166 manufacturing SMEs. In order to examine, whether the company was active on the international market, 200 SMEs in south Sweden were asked, if they exported to, produced or sold on any other market than their home market.

Fire has historically been of great ecological importance in the boreal forests of Sweden. The forest fire regime has, however, varied between different parts of the country. The objective of this thesis is therefore to investigate the fire history in Fulufjället National Park and, on this basis, give suggestions for future fire management. The reconstruction of fire history was done by cross-dating fire scars in samples taken from living and dead Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). Local fire chronologies were established at 17 points in the forests in and around Fulufjället National Park by cross-dating fire scars on 54 samples. The oldest year-ring dated from year 968.

This qualitative study examines how emergency people are framed in Swedish evening-, and local newspapers during the forest fire in Va?stmanland, Sweden 2014. The study also includes if there is any difference between the framing due to the location of the newspaper. The study is based on qualitative text analysis. The theoretical basis is representation, framing theory, media image, media logic and a few conceptions from crisis communication theory.

During 2007 the City of Stockholm installed five grid connected photovoltaic systems. The aim of this master thesis is to quantify the amount of produced energy and recommend routines to collect and analyse production data, to make production data accessible by the public and to gain experience for future installations.The total amount of produced energy until March 2009 is 227 000 kWh, with an annual rate of 150 000 kWh. The expected annual rate was 148 000 kWh.All system owners are positive about their plants and see economical benefits in scaling up such systems.The installations need very little attendance and maintenance, however it is recommended that an alarm function is installed for automatic feedback in case of a system failure. All future systems should be inspected during full operation to determine if the actual capacity is matching the installed capacity..

The translation of culture-specific words and expressions as well as how to fully transmit the semantics and pragmatics of a text when translating are two things that often poses problems and challenges for translators. The strategies among which one can choose are many and the translation is more or less bound to lose something along the way. In this present essay, the Swedish comic album Prins Charles ka?nsla (2010) by Liv Stro?mquist and its French translation Les sentiments du Prince Charles (2012) have been studied. With the help of existing translation strategies, what is examined is initially what choices the translators have made and how this affects the French text.

In this essay I describe the development of my prose work entitled Jorden a?r platt (Earth is flat). In the text we encounter a woman whose 40-year-old brother is diagnosed with lung cancer. The brother has been living a hectic life of drug addiction. The relationship between brother and sister is characterized by ironic distance, but also a lot of love.

Previous research confirms that there is a major decline of pollinators worldwide. Investigations have mainly focused on pollination services in the agricultural landscapes and therefore, there is a lack of knowledge on the effects pollinators may have in urban environment. This paper examines the presence of honey bees in central parts of Stockholm, Sweden. The study presents what conditions, possibilities and motives there are behind the phenomenon of urban bee keeping. I found ten locations with beehives and a total of 18 hives within the delimited area. Nothing seems to indicate that conditions may limit the presence of honey bees.

F?rt?tningen av st?der skapar en utmaning f?r bevarandet av de t?tortsn?ra skogarna. V?rden som skapas av m?nniskans upplevelser i skogen kan sammanfattas i begreppet skogens sociala v?rden, som visat sig ha en stor betydelse f?r folkh?lsan. D? m?nga kommuner ?ger t?tortsn?ra skog, ?r det av intresse att studera hur de planerar f?r skogens sociala v?rden.

In Sweden today so-called "prescribed nature conservation burning" is performed due to the change in silvicultural law, certification and an increased knowledge regarding the field of fire in the forest landscape. The aim is to re-create structures and qualities made by the fire regimes of the past, though on a much smaller geographical scale. The structures and qualities to be re-created are for example broad leaf stands, trees with large diameter, heterogeneous stands regarding variables such as age and diameter. If we increase our knowledge of the constitution of forests characterized by fire, then we will be able to set goals for what achievements to reach both on landscape scale and stand scale. The aim of this paper is to try to describe how a stand from the past was composed regarding mainly the spatial arrangement and compare it with the stand of today in the same place. This to be done by using relict material, that is stumps and dead standing trees.

Tropisk regnskog i Sydostasien är ett av de områden som hyser störst biodiversitet i världen, av vilken stora ytor är hotat. Ön Borneo drabbades av en katastrof åren 1982-1983 efter att väderfenomenet El Niño orsakat torka med vidsträckta skogsbränder som följd. Detta lämnade stora ytor av Borneos skogar i ett undermåligt, sekundärt tillstånd. På grund av detta startades INIKEA projektet med syfte att rehabilitera skogar i regionen kring Tawau vid östkusten av delstaten Sabah i Malaysia. I denna studie undersökte jag resultatet av rehabiliteringsarbetet på krontaket i tre olika skogstyper genom att ta hemisfäriska foton med en digital systemkamera (DSLR).

SMF Skogsentreprenörerna is a nationwide organisation for Swedish forestry contractors. It has about 750 organised companies with somewhere around 1500 logging machines. These machines perform well over 50% of all yearly landed wood in Sweden. The members of SMF also performs more and more of other functions in Swedish professional forestry, such as soil scarification, planting and pre-commercial thinning of younger stands. In order to determine what major priorities SMF should focus on in the future a member survey was initialised and carried out by SMF together with Daniel Larsson-Snygg, student at the swedish university of agricultural sciences SLU. This report presents the result of this survey sent out to all members of SMF. It is intended to answer a number of questions about their entrepreneurship such as: What different kinds of work do these companies perform? How many machines and employees do they have? How old are the company owners and their employees? What are their thoughts about the future of their business? How well does SMF serve their members needs?.

This thesis discusses the representation of bodies in todays non-fiction television in Sweden. I have chosen to focus on deviant bodies (sexual, deformed or unhealthy) on display in reality-shows and documentaries on SVT, TV4 but especially on the commercial channels TV3 and Kanal5. Also discussed are the viewers emotional and bodily reactions. Altough these shows are different from one another in many respects, I argue that there is also a common thread between them. From a sociological and cultural perspective, and with help of some historical examples, I try to illustrate how we view these shows and what their function is.

The genetic relationship between three Swedish horse breeds was investigated using microsatellite data from 144 loci in 30 horses. The North Swedish Trotter is believed to have been crossed with the Standardbred in the 1950?s to produce a faster trotter. If true, the North Swedish Trotter should be more alike the Standardbred than what the North Swedish Draught Horse is, from which they originate. This was investigated using F-statistics and Nei?s distance in GENEPOP and GENETIX and cluster assignment in STRUCTURE.