The aim with this report is to investigate what influence the way playgrounds are used throw the case study in Vänersborg, and also to find methods for municipalities to collect information about how playgrounds are used. The methods were observations, interviews with parents and children, a questionary with questions about what playgrounds they used, how often and why they used them and what the children used to do there. There was also a demographic investigation and documentary research. The most popular playground, Skräcklan, gets visitors from all parts of the municipality. It is located in a park with a view over the lake Vänern, there is a parking place and a café and it has furthermore a large area and many play equipments. Many of the families make shorter trips and picnics to this place. In exception of this playground, the families almost always go to the playground in their neighborhood and their part of the town.

Many wood living insects are considered threatened by modern forestry due to the reduction in amount of dead wood. During the last decade various methods have been used to enhance the quantity of dead wood in managed forests. However little is known how and if these methods are aiding saproxylic insects. The threatened tenebrionid beetle, Upis ceramboides, is already extinct in southern Sweden. It develops in white rotted dead birch (Betula spp) and requires sun-exposed sites.

Root rot is a big hurter and a huge economic problem for the Swedish and European forestry. The severest hurter is Heterobasidion annosum (Fr.) Bref and it occurs as two different species in Sweden. Commonly referred to as the P-type (Heterobasidion annosum s.s. (Fr.) Bref.) and the S-type (Heterobasidion parviporum Niemelä & Korhonen). Therefore a lot of research has been carried out in this topic to find a solution and reduce this problem, one alternative that have shown to be profitable is stump treatment in thinnings.

As birch is one of the most common trees in Sweden, and probably one of the easiest for someone who lives here to identify, it is interesting to note that most people do not know how variable the genus is and how widely it is distributed across the northern hemisphere. One can find birch growing at both high and low elevations, demanding different soil conditions and preferring varying amounts of sunlight. Many people may also be surprised to hear that the colour of the bark can vary from bight white to almost black, and different shades of pink, orange and red can also be displayed. This, together with the astonishing beauty of the genus, the important role as a pioneer in many ecological systems and the difficulty in sorting out the taxonomy of the genus, constitutes the background of this thesis. The thesis is written at the Department of Landscape Development in Alnarp, Sweden with Kenneth Lorentzon, researcher at the Swedish University of Agriculture as a supervisor. The aim of this thesis is to highlight which species and cultivars within the genus Betula could be appropriate for horticultural use in Sweden.

Since the 1950s, the development of modern rotation forestry in boreal Fennoscandia has resulted in a severe reduction of older forests, and a high degree of fragmentation among the small patches that remains of old forest. In Sweden, when performing conservation value assessments in order to identify and preserve the remaining forest habitats, the government authorities use to a significant extent a set of indicator species that indicate habitats of high biological conservation value. One species considered to indicate high conservation values in pine-heath forests is the red-listed ectomycorrhizal (EM) macrofungi Sarcodon scabrosus (Fr.) P. Karst. In the present study, the validity of using S.

The red-tailed monkey (Cercopithecus ascanius) is a small, alert and active animal inhabiting forests with dense vegetation and as such hard to observe in its natural habitat. The principal aim of this study was to scrutinize whether the methods, previously used in a behavioural study of the blue monkey (Cercopithecus mitis) can be applied in studies of the red-tailed monkey?s behaviour as well. Additionally, habitat preference and foraging behaviour of the red-tailed monkey were examined. The study was carried out between the 16th and the 22nd of March 2009 in the Sabaringo forest, located on the western border of the Masai Mara National Reserve.

This is a 15 hp (10 p) thesis in biology at the programme for Horticulture Management at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp. In this literature study we have processed, reviewed and arranged facts and research, to make it more available for those who want to know more about establishment or cultivation of mosses. Our client is Fredriksdal?s Museums and Gardens in Helsingborg who are planning to establish a moss garden. The information is meant to be used by Fredriksdal and other similar facilities.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze and show possibilities how a city can grow into the scenery of a oak dominated landscape and how this encounter can add values to the city. The city in focus is Linköping, a city that is approaching one of Sweden?s largest oak dominated cultural landscapes. To this landscape high ecological and cultural values are connected. The recreational values are also of importance especially because of its urban location also because the city is mainly surrounded by flat agricultural land.

Urban farming can be viewed in several contexts. The first part of this work brings up the beneficial effects of farming on our physical and mental health, knowledge as well as on social life in cities. The introduction of gardening in schools can contribute to an increased awareness on both agricultural practices and importance as well as ecological processes. It can also be used in teaching of other subjects. Farming can also contribute to improving the household economy, and the economy on a municipal or national level.

Sweden has today the highest moose (Alces alces) population in the world. The population has been very high since the late seventies and in the beginning of the eighties there was a big ?moose explosion?. The main food source for moose during the winter is young pine (Pinus sylvestris) and birch (Betula spp.). The high moose population has therefore lead to high damage on pine forests over big areas.

The modern silvicultural practices of today, with cutting by compartments, have led to a large benefit for the moose population through the cleared areas which produces large amount of fodder. This new landscape can produce and feed a large moose population. But it will cause a conflict effect towards the landowners; the conflict consists of browsing mainly in the young pine forest. The result from browsing and damage will be sparse stands with reduced growth and technical damage like leader shoot browsing, stem breaking and damage of the bark. Technical damage can kill the tree or damage it so hard that it would not work as future saw timber.

This Master thesis is made at the request of the local municipality of Uppsala in Sweden. The purpose of this work is to create a guiding management plan. Recreation, conservation of the cultivated landscape and the historical environment, conservation biology and the aim of the landowners are all considerd. The area is almost 34 hectares and located north of the centre of Uppsala. Landowners are the National Heritage Board, the diocese of Uppsala, the university of Uppsala, the local municipality of Uppsala and one private landowner.

Milk fever, or parturient paresis, is the second most common disease in Swedish dairy cows. The disorder is associated with the onset of lactation when some cows are unable to meet the metabolic demands of calcium to support milk production and therefore develop a state of hypocalcaemia. Clinical hypocalcaemia (milk fever) may lead to coma and death in severe cases but subclinical hypocalcaemia has also been shown to have negative effects on e.g. feed intake and production and to increase the susceptibility of the cow to develop secondary diseases. The nutritional strategy applied precalving is of great importance in preventing milk fever and e.g.

This thesis aims at examining to what extent a few, algorithmically very easily extractable document features can be used to classify electronic documents according to genre. A set of experiments is therefore carried out, using only 11 such simple features in an attempt to classify 84 documents belonging to electronic academic journals into three manually identified genres: table of contents, article, and review. The 11 features are also divided into three sets, containing metrics of words and sentences; punctuation marks; and URL links, respectively. The performance when using these sets of features is then measured with regard to classification accuracy, using a k-NN classifier, four different values of k (1, 3, 5, 7), and both leave-one-out and 10-fold cross-validation. Best results are achieved when using all three feature sets (i.e.

Wood has always been an important material for people, and it is used for many applications. As for example, fuel for cooking and heating houses, construction materials and for constructing means of transport. Since wood also is a material that with time biologically degrades due to activity by micro organisms and wood fungi it is important to find ways to protect and further lengthen the life span of the material when in service. One method is to decrease the amount of water in the material by impregnation with an hydrophobic oil. The Linotech method which uses only pure linseed oil is one such possible method. The aim of this study was to investigate the possibility to at the same time impregnate and stain/colour wood samples of pine and spruce by using the Linotech method.