Stump wood was used between 1850 and 1950 for production of tar and as firewood. In the 1950s the use decreased because of the introduction of the cheap fossil oil. In the 1970s stump wood became an interesting issue again as a raw material for the pulp industry. Stump lifting has today become a possible source for bioenergy. The objectives with this study were to investigate the productivity of stump lifting and stump extraction, and to analyse the economy.

People who invest capital in promising projects as a profession are called venture capitalists. They are constantly looking for new investment opportunities. Recently, media have observed a growing interest in forest land as capital investment. This is because several fund and investment company market the possibility of safe return through investment in woodland, both in Sweden and abroad. When an investment in forests is seen as an acceptable investment option, focus turns to nearby areas, namely agricultural land.

The urbanization of the world is increasing. How it affects bird populations have been well studied during the last decade, and comparisons between urban and non-urban habitats have been carried out. A common method for measuring habitat quality is to calculate the population density. This method is easy to use, but have been criticized during the last couple of years. In this study, data of population densities was compared with data on reproduction success.

This essay is about the Swedish textile heritage but also with an analysis of handmade hemp textiles from Transylvania. Plant fibers such as hemp and flax grown in a soil nature that existed around the subsistence farm. The knowledge of the earth nature combined with textiles has not been specifically studied in the research from the last century. By examining simple folk textiles of hemp shows how the textiles also are an universal field. The focus is on the raw material which is a transformation between nature and culture.With a phenomenological approach, the study will describe how the textile heritage announcement molds a territory in the interpretation of "our" Swedish plantfibres for textiles uses.

My work has resulted in an interactive search engine for plants that can be found at www.plantit.se. In the work process I have searched for which search criteria is most important when doing searches on woodland plants. I have done this by an analysis of existing databases and with an survey where leading plant expertise answered questions about woodland plants. I analyzed three search pages that are on the internet today Havenet.dk, Backyardgardener.com and Den virtuella floran. I concluded that there are several flaws but also many positive aspects that I have used when developing the interface of my page. The survey resulted in the basis for my search criteria the answers listed the most important factors when planting woodland plants. From this information I developed a system with five values on every criteria.

Hemp is a versatile plant with many uses that has been around for thousands of years. The plant is highly adaptable andwill cultivate in almost any soil. It has excellent remediation properties and has shown to be relatively consistent when itcomes to crop yields. The aim of this literature survey is to examine how hemp can be used to be considered asustainable energy crop in Sweden through database searches and interviews. Hemps characteristics as an energy cropand its remediation properties is evaluated and compared with other plants that are used in Sweden.

Within agriculture it is important to optimize the use of nitrogen, not only from an economic point of view but also to minimize damage to the environment. This can sometimes be difficult, especially within organic farming. Organic farmers are using increasing amounts of waste products from the food industry to cover their nitrogen needs. These different organic fertilizers release nitrogen at different rates and under specific soil conditions. Because of this, it would be beneficial to have a standardized method to measure the amount and rate of nitrogen mineralization from organic fertilizers. This project contributes to this knowledge by investigating whether relatively simple and repeatable laboratory methods can be used to estimate the nitrogen fertilizer value of organic fertilizers.

In Sweden today many municipalities and sport clubs chooses to build artificial turfs becauseof the increased period of using the turfs during the year and less maintenance requirementsthan for natural grass fields. What could be problematic with artificial turfs is the rubbergranules used as infill material in the turf matt. The rubber granules are often made fromrecycled tires, which may contain for the human health and the environment, harmful substances.This was the reason why the Swedish Chemicals Agency commissioned a statusreport in 2006 which, among other things, concluded that the environmental and health risksassociated with granules made from recycled tiers in artificial turf fields were small, but thatthere could be a local environmental hazard. The purpose and objective of the risk assessmentwas to identify how artificial turf plans granules can affect recipients in the area closeto the pitches and provide input to reduce the spread of metals and substances harmful forboth human health and the surrounding environment. The work was divided into three parts:(1) the construction of artificial turf pitches and their material content, the spread of granulatesoutside the fields and disposal of artificial turf pitches.

Human presence has always influenced the surrounding areas, the forest as well. Structure and species composition have changed during human land use. Knowledge regarding these changes should be of great interest for conservation and forestry. We have analyzed human impact on the tree species composition on five study sites during 2000 years in Ångermanland, Sweden. More specifically the change in tree species composition in percentage amongst alder, birch, spruce and pine over time.

With rising energy prices and the threat of climate change, energy costs and energy savings havebecome a central and important part in building. Therefore it is interesting to explore different andnon-conventional methods of energy conservation. Building Earth sheltered houses is such a method.Earth provides good insulation and provides the ability to both reduce the total heating needs and toreduce the maximum power demand. The aim of this study was to construct a house in Malmö and seeif Earth sheltered houses can be a cost effective alternative for the construction of sustainable andenergy-efficient houses.Previous studies have shown that Earth sheltered houses have reduced their power requirement with upto 25% and their use of energy with 10%. Numerical calculations in Comsol Multiphysic 4.2, wasperformed on a house with different degrees of earth covering.

The global biodiversity loss is mainly due to human activities such as an intensification of forestry. Boreal forest ecosystems in Fennoscandia are characterized by disturbances such as forest fires, storms and floods. However, industrial forestry practices suppress forest fires and change the landscape, leading to a loss of habitats and associated species. Particularly lichen species with slow adaptation abilities and a strong substrate specificity face an extinction debt in boreal forests since their substrates are long-lived but no longer created. In this study the species-substrate relationship of two red-listed forest-fire dependent lichen species Carbon-icola anthracophila and C.

This thesis is my exploration of the immaterial heritage that is the craft of bending of ?dn?ris? out of spruce. It?s a broken tradition that is scarcely described, mainly through Yngve Ryd?s report T?ltk?tor (1999) that contains interviews with two knowledge keepers, Nilas Tuolja and Johan Rassa. Yngve Ryd?s report went against the earlier opinion by the mid 20th century ethnologist Ernst Manker who claimed that they were only made exclusively out of mountain birch that has curved growth. As a background, I discuss the special importance of heritage conservation, both material and immaterial, in a S?mi context as being an indigenous people.

Zoos currently aim at keeping animals in as natural habitats as possible, since they havegone from displaying exotic animals to working with conservation of endangered species.It is therefore more common that zoos keep groups composed of two or more species in thesame enclosure. The aim of this report is to study why and how different species are held atzoos. Species in the wild can interact in different degrees depending on season andresources. When species are held together at zoos the space can be more effectively used,the animals increase their activity and the visitors increase their learning. Mixed speciesenclosures involve more work and risks of injury.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and discuss clinch-nails found at an excavation at terrace II in the Garrison of Birka, on the island of Björkö in Sweden. This type of clinch-nails is common in Viking age Sweden and is usually interpreted as coming from boats. The study will try to show that these types of nails could have been used in several kinds of wooden constructions. It will also show how the nails were made and what kinds of tools were used by the Viking smiths. The study has shown that this type of nails were used in several different types of wooden constructions such as boats, sleds, cart bodies, coffins, Birka's ramparts and buildings.

Grassland is a great part of Swedish agriculture and there is a demand of what the grassland yield is in practice. To be able to control the economic of the milkproduction it is important for the farmer to know how big quantities of pasture there is to use during the year.The work is based on interviews of 22 farmers from southern part of Sweden. Their area of grassland fluctuate between 16 up to 360 hectares. The questionnaire content 32 questions.The most common way to weight the green plant material is to drive over a scale, and to measure the dry extract with your own gauge. It takes in average two minutes toweight one load of green plant material.