Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient but a surplus could lead to eutrophication. Furthermore, the minerals used to produce the mineral phosphate is a non renewable resource. There are in other words several reasons to reduce the leakage of P and the agriculture is one important area to attend. The aim of this work has been to investigate if carbon-rich arable soils content contain more P than arable soils with low carbon content. Moreover it has been calculated if the carbon-rich soils could pose a risk of P leakage by comparing their delivery of P with the plant uptake. The work has consisted of compiling the results from former gathered and analysed soil samples of 130 Swedish arable soils. The fractions of P considered are water soluble P (Pw), ammonium lactate-extractable P (P-AL), hydrochloric acid-soluble P (P-HCl), organic ammonium lactate-extractable P (Porg-AL) and inorganic ammonium lactate-extractable P (Porg-HCl).

The production of oilseed rape is an important issue in Sweden and those who never have grown oilseed rape (OSR) are now willing to try. It is always a risk to grow oilseed rape, specially winter OSR, because of outwintering. This risk increases as you go north and therefore establishment and autumn growth is very important. These are some of the reasons that I have chosen to write about the establishment of winter oilseed rape in Middle Sweden. There are many factors that influence the outcome of the establishment, e. g.

There are a great possibility to shorten the time between mowing and preservation by spreading of ley crops in connection to the conditioning. In this case the cellular respiration (the plants breeding that consume sugar until the crop is ensiled) should not continue as long and the forage will perhaps get a higher nutritional value. The capacity of the next machine could also be higher because the rake gives swaths with a lot of material. There is also a possibility that spreading of ley crops gives the material a more homogeneous content of dry matter and that gives a reduced growth of clostridium. This is particularly important when the method of harvest doesn?t include any mixing of the material like it does with a round baler or silagewagon.

Ensåsengruvan is a mine situated within Ljusdals municipality in central Sweden. Themine was in use from 1984 to 1991 and has since been undergoing a remediation program. Mine tailings from sulfide rich ore is a potential environmental hazard due to its tendency to cause acid waters and heavy metal leakage. Lake Ensjön is situated one kilometer from the mine area. Due to the hydrological conditions it was not expected to receive inflowing water from the mining area.

Boplatsvallar, often translated as semi-subterranean settlements, is an ancient monument with a diffuse definition. Defined as ?embankments that partially or completely surround a often lowered/dug down surface- this category of ancient monuments is also made up of a former category which traditionally was interpreted as winter settlements from the late Stone age in Sweden. This view of the ancient monuments carried over, to a certain extent, to this new definition. Should this be the case, that this category of ancient monuments are remains of winter settlements,  used recurringly over an extended period of time, then they should exhibit similar signals in regards to the distribution of the anthropogenically altered soil chemical and soil physical properties at the sites.The area around Lillsjön, Anundsjö parish in Ångermanland, have four boplatsvallar located separately in the regional area.

Lerbodaälven is a river in the municipality of Kil which, due to high phosphorus content is not meeting the requirements for good ecological status according to the Water Framework Directive. The purpose of this report is to investigate the causes for the high content of phosphorus that has been measured in Lerbodaälven between 1995-2010. Four questions will be answered in this report. 1. Does the sewage treatment work affect the phosphorus level in Lerbodaälven? The result from the time series analysis shows that the sewage treatment works have a small impact on the phosphorus level in Lerbodaälven.

The purpose with this report was to compare three commonly occurring methods for measuring plant available nitrogen in soils. The methods extraction, incubation and Plant root simulator (PRS) probe - an ion exchange membrane (Western Ag Innovations, Inc., Saskatoon, Canada) method were used and comparison between these methods were conducted. A full factorial experiment were set up in northern Finland with the treatments excluding herbivores, warming and fertilization to see how the inorganic nitrogen content in the soil was effected by the treatments. Soil cores were taken and from them a subsample was incubated for 18 days and thereafter analyzed for inorganic N in laboratory. PRS- probes were in the ground for 1 month.

Delineation of recharge areas for aquifers is performed in the groundwater mapping process at the Swedish geological survey, SGU. This work is time consuming and performed manually. It is therefore desirable to develop a more general and repeatable method for defining recharge areas for aquifers.The purpose of this study was to investigate two other possible methods to delineate recharge areas for aquifers. The first method was to examine the possibility of using the topography of the bedrock to define the recharge areas for aquifers. To enable this, a method for generating the topography of the bedrock was developed.

The prevailing food and energy crisis of the world, due to the declining reserves of fossil energy and a never ending rise of consumption, forces us to look into new fields to supply our energy demand. The boom of bio energy is criticized, as food crops are used to provide biodiesel and ethanol and the volumes are ridiculously small to supply world demand. Algae are one of the world?s oldest life forms and exist in many different phyla, providing a great variety to choose from, for different purposes. Cultivating microalgae offer a way to produce energy at great volumes without competing with food production and at the same time the algae offer a way to use our expensive nutrients in a more efficient way, besides this the algae are carbon dioxide neutral since their carbon source can be supplied by the atmosphere and the additional energy required can be supplied by algal oil or other renewable sources.

Overdue cleanings have for a long time been an important topic of discussion within the forestry sector. When stands that have not been pre-commercially thinned are reaching the level of commercial thinning, many problems occur in terms of decision-making and economical outcomes. These types of stands are commonly known as conflict-stands. The work was carried out partly as an interview survey towards representatives from the forest sector and the energy sector, partly as a case study of conflict-stands situated in Böksholm, north of Växjö and in Tönnersjö east of Halmstad. The criteria for the studied stands were that they had to be dominated by Norway spruce and be in a severe status of ?conflict?. The aim of the interview was to get an overview of the situation today, and also analyse trends in terms of conflict stands.

The prevailing food and energy crisis of the world, due to the declining reserves of fossil energy and a never ending rise of consumption, forces us to look into new fields to supply our energy demand. The boom of bio energy is criticized, as food crops are used to provide biodiesel and ethanol and the volumes are ridiculously small to supply world demand. Algae are one of the world?s oldest life forms and exist in many different phyla, providing a great variety to choose from, for different purposes. Cultivating microalgae offer a way to produce energy at great volumes without competing with food production and at the same time the algae offer a way to use our expensive nutrients in a more efficient way, besides this the algae are carbon dioxide neutral since their carbon source can be supplied by the atmosphere and the additional energy required can be supplied by algal oil or other renewable sources.

To create multifunctional buffer strips along a watercourse in an economically sustainable way requires consideration of many different factors. In this plan we have selected pollutant reduction as the main purpose of the buffer strip. We have also strived to achieve minimal income loss due to reduced production, increased biological diversity, good game preservation that leads to higher income from hunting, aesthetical satisfaction and possibility to profit from available subsidies. This is done mainly to make landowners/farmers more interested in creating buffer strips along water courses.As sand is the dominant type of soil in the area, the water course is less affected by surface runoff compared to if the soil would be clay or some other finer texture. Game preservation and subsidies have therefore been the main factors when establishing the width of the strip, because these require wider buffer strips in some cases.

Using leaching test is a way to get a picture of pollutants retention and leaching in a risk assessment on contaminated land. There are several different types of standardised leaching tests today, where the natural leaching processes are speeded up to make it possible to predict the leaching of pollutants. These leaching tests have been developed for waste and there are no specific guidelines on how to judge the results from the tests, when making a risk assessment on contaminated land. This work is an investigation on how to use leaching test in this type of risk assessments. The strengths and weaknesses of the different types of tests are discussed. Depending on what type of information you want from your leaching test, different types of tests are suitable.

The research group Soil and Water Management at the department of Soil and Environment at theSwedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala are studying greenhouse gas emissions fromcultivated peat soils. To measure carbon dioxide emissions from peat soils in the field the researchgroup are now using two portable carbon dioxide meters (Vaisala GMP343). For practical reasons,they plan to acquire a new type of automated field meter. The aim of this study is to evaluate thepresent meters to see how environmental conditions and instrument settings affect the results,which is meant to facilitate the introduction of the new field meter when the meters needs to becompared. As a part of the study the relationship between groundwater level and carbon dioxideemissions from peat soils will be investigated.The evaluation of the two carbon dioxide meters was made by connecting them to one single airtightsystem, with the aim of creating identical measurement environments.

The global climate-change means increasing mean-temperature and higher precipitation in Sweden, which leads to shorter periods of frozen ground in the forest. At the same time the harvesting machines are getting bigger and more powerful. The forest industry aim at an even wood flow, and the ground damage has to be as low as possible. The two biggest causes for ground-damage is the bearing capacity of the forest ground and the ground-pressure of the harvesting machines. The aim of this study was to find out some rules for the machine choice considering ground pressure, when harvesting on ground with low bearing capacity.A field study, using a Valmet 890.3 forwarder, was carried out where different ground pressures and their effect on the ground were tested on two different types of ground.Additionally, an inventory of damaged harvesting grounds was made.