The forests of Sweden are constantly changing. Map studies indicate that the amount of deciduous trees in Sweden has decreased in recent years in favor of the coniferous trees. The National Forest Inventory has since the early 1920s monitored the Swedish forests and in recent years has made the old data digitally available. In the present project, we have investigated how the numbers of stems in different diameter classes have changed for birch and other deciduous trees. The inventory was conducted in the same manner as in the first forest inventory.

The Arctic region has not been a topic of discussion or a reason for a conflict in the past, but with the development of environmental issues which has resulted in melting of the ice, so has the interest for the region developed. This has resulted in a conflict over the area, with five countries as main actors. This paper investigates the five main actors? goals with increased influence in the area, using the thoughts of Rational Actor Model, with states as utility-maximizing actors and foreign policy as the expression of national interest. Furthermore the paper investigates the means of getting to the goal, what kind of tools they use.The paper shows that all of the countries are interested in the economically benefits that are buried under the melting ice and the short cuts in sea routes that will be a possibility to use ones the ice melt more.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse how medial representations in a specific cultural debate expresses thoughts about gender, power and speech. The debate in question took place in Sweden 2010 and was about an inspection of sexual harassments in the Swedish acting area, made by Sveriges Radio, Ekot. This essay examines the made representations of the debate, with a feministic point of view and concludes that a male gaze shapes the form of speech and gives the debate a discourse sort of reasoning about gender. The special discourse formatted in the examined area contains a certain conception of power and the structure of power, which is also explained by the male gaze and the meaning of post-feminism..

This study aims to analyze the risks with building new households between railroads and shore, the focus of the study lays on Öbacka strand in Umeå municipality. The study also investigate if a land use conflict has taken place and how it was handled.The paper is based on different documents that was central for the work of planning the households and some interviews with operators that was highly involved with the planning of the area.The results shows that there is several risks with establishing new household between railroads and shores. Mainly because of the exposure of noise from the railways, though the risk for impact on the living environment for animals were low in this case there is a generally risk that it could get negative effects. It also a very important that the availability to the shore is secured. Planning in this type of area involves a great number of operators can easily cause a conflict due to the different perspectives on how the land should be used in the future, and also because of protecting different interests.

Since the beginning of the new millennium the world?s population has increased exponentially fast. The majority of this growth has been accommodated for by urbanization of the developing world. This in turn has lead to a wide spread of informal settlements. Thus, areas of urban slums, that have risen illegally on the marginal lands within and at the periphery of the formal city.

Investment aid is a part of the Rural Area Programme, which contains support to Swedish agriculture and the countryside. There is a new programme every seventh year and SLU (Swedish University of Agriculture) has the mission to perform the evaluation of the previous programme, which lasted between 2000 -2006. The investment aid's aim is to support investments that, among other things, support the adaptation or conversion to more environmentally friendly production methods, improves the product quality, develops new or complementing activities, and improves the environment and the animal- and working environment. The question is if it's only money that matters for these kinds of investments to be done and what has happened with the money that was paid? This thesis investigates how the investment aid has affected the receivers.

Disturbances, such as fire and wind, are important for saproxylic beetles (= beetles depending on decaying wood) to gain substrate in boreal forests. Clear-cutting is an example of a man-made disturbance. Measures such as prescribed burning have been made to resemble natural disturbances. The aim of this study was to see which clear-cut characteristics are important for the occurrence of the saproxylic beetle Upis ceramboides. This is a species favored by open habitats and is said to respond positively to forest fires. The distribution area in Sweden for this species has decreased during the last two centuries and I wanted to see if there were differences between clear-cuts in Hälsingland, where it is very rare and decreasing, and Norrbotten where this study was conducted.

A substantial part of the Swedish outdoor education is being practiced in so called ?school forests?. The concept school forest was first introduced in the 1980?s by the organization Skogen i Skolan. The definition of a school forest is an area that is being used for educational purposes, over which the school and the land owner has reached an agreement of how the school may utilize it.

Chemical substances are spread diffusely and uncontrollably as a result of the increased consumption of goods. REVAQ is a certification system that works to reduce the flow of hazardous substances to Swedish treatment plants and to create a sustainable nutrient recycling. According to REVAQ, the yearly accumulating rate of metals should not exceed 0.2% in soil per year. Silver and bismuth are two metals that do not fulfill this requirement. The silver concentration in sludge decreased during the last decade, however the last few years, it has leveled off.

Nearly 50 years after the building of the first million programme neighbourhoods many Swedish municipalities faces an extensive restoration work in these neighbourhoods which during their relatively short lifetime have acted as a target for a large amount of criticism. Öster in Gävle is a million programme neighbourhood that has gone through an extensive restoration between 2001-2009 with the aim of improving the living environment. Improvements have been made in the outdoor environment, to the facades of the houses and the entrances? of each building. The purpose of this study has been to investigate the effects of the renewal in the physical outdoor environment for those who live in the neighbourhood.

The interest in harvesting wood fuel in conflict stands has grown in recent years as a consequence of the increased demand for biofuel. Conflict stands are young forests that have not been cleaned and have a large number of stems ha-1with a great height and diameter distribution. This means that traditional field measurements in conflict stands are difficult and very time consuming. Therefore, the forestry sector is in need of new, more efficient inventory methods. In this study, the Lidar data from Lantmäteriet?s (the Swedish mapping, cadastral and land registration authorities) new national height model was used in combination with plots from the Swedish national forest inventory from 2009 to create functions for; height, volume, diameter and number of stems.

The main purpose of this project was to make a survey of the steam and electricity consumption at Akzo Nobel Functional Chemistry AB and give suggestions of how to minimize them. These three different areas were focused on. First to make a survey of all the most important consumers, second to find the electricity consumption of the air compressors and the amount of waste heat produced from them. The third area was to calculate a model of how much fresh water that is used during a cooling sequence in the water based heating/cooling system of the reactors and give a suggestion of a suitable reuse for this water.The main result is a total survey of the energy consumption in steam and electricity. The survey shows that the second largest group after drying is heating of ventilation which gives big potentials of reducing the total steam consumption if there is a way of being self supporting in ventilation heat.

The result of this work is a plan for the development of an 1128 m2 elderly raised garden. The purpose has been to create an overall plan covering the long-term development of the garden. The work process has covered a description of the garden of today, review of requirements, analysis of the garden sections, design of a new plan as well as starting the construction of the new garden. The plan covers a time period of a couple of years to create the new garden since the construction work is carried out during spare time with small resources available. The planning must contain review of functions such as protection from insight, eating area and compost area. Also the esthetic expression must be planned. Colors, shapes, choice of material and plants together make up the esthetic expression. It is recommended to include anything you wish to create in the garden. In a raised garden one has to overcome the step to remove trees and shrubs and think different.

SUMMARYEnvironmental issues are currently a hot topic of debate. Studies within the optics branch have not specifically been conducted previously, so the aim of this study was to determine the extent of environmental-awareness specifically within this branch.A survey, consisting of questions relating to environmental issues, was distributed to 100 randomly-selected opticians in Sweden. Of these 100 surveys, 64 were returned and showed a varied branch-engagement for environmental issues.Results of this survey showed that opticians were best in sorting newspapers, magazines, other paper and hazardous waste. Metal and rigid plastic were not sorted to any larger extent.Choosing environmentally-safe products was not so popular and only six stores always do this. 25 shops turn off electrical machines and equipment over night; while the majority of the remaining stores leave the machines on during the night.27 stores did not know if their electrical company provided ?green electricity?.Results showed that there is a lot of work to be done in making the stores more environmentally friendly.

Over the past twenty years, the cooperation within the European Union (EU) has strengthened and expanded with both more number of Member States and stronger influence on international politics. The unique character of the Union and its ability to enforce peace and humanitarian intervention has attracted attention in political science. This prominent position of the Union is perceived by many scholars who often hold this derived from the Union's influence in international relations. Various terms have been used to define the powers of the Union. The British researcher Ian Manners states that the unique identity of the Union in the international arena is formed by its normative power.  An important policy area within the Union is the environmental cooperation.