Buffer zones play an important role for the water quality in our watercourses. When harvesting a forest close to a watercourse a buffer zone should be left. When it's not left, it will lead to radical changes in the environment for the water organisms. The overall purpose of this thesis was to illuminate the production- and environmental thinking when establishing new buffer zones in south of Värmland. The partials goals were to determine choice of tree species, ways of regenerate, occurrence of soil scarification and the occurrence of machine tracks in newly established buffer zones.

Following the accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl in 1986, great volumes of137Cs were distributed over large parts of the former Soviet Union and Europe. Over Scotland,radiocaesium was deposited as wet deposition. Due to the relatively long physical half-life of30 years, there are still measurable activity concentrations in the natural environment. Thisstudy was made on two organic soils, Knockandy Hill and Rora Moss, situated in the easternpart of the central highlands of Scotland. At these two sites, studies on migration and transferbetween soil and plants were conducted.

Carbon sequestration through restoration of degraded pastoral soils is an advocated way of mitigating global warming, and simultaneously alleviating poverty. An often proposed rehabilitation strategy is fencing of pastures, a method that was introduced to the farmers of Chepareria by the Vi-Agroforestry organization in 1987. The landscape of Chepareria changed from eroded, over-grazed grasslands, to a mixture of open-grazed commons, pastoral enclosures and cultivations. The aim of this study was to investigate (1) if the soil organic carbon (SOC) is higher inside the enclosures than on the open-grazed commons, (2) if SOC is affected by duration of fencing and (3) what effect cultivation of pastures has on the SOC. Estimations of vegetation cover and deep profile (100cm) soil sampling was performed on six clusters containing; (1) open-grazing (OG) (2) 1-5 years of fencing (FENCED(1)), (3) 7-10 years of fencing (FENCED(2)), (4) 15-23 years of fencing (FENCED(3)), (5) maize from OG (A(OG)), (6) maize from fenced pasture (A(FENCED)).

Horse keeping is gaining an increasing interest in Sweden. During 2004 to 2010 the number of horses increased with 10 - 20 %, and was estimated to be 362 700 in 2010. Julmyra Horse Center (JHC), situated in Heby municipality, is a gated community for people sharing a large interest for horses and a vision of a sustainable horse management has been formulated. This study evaluates how the horse keeping of today at JHC, and how an expansion of the horse keeping may affect the risk of enhanced phosphorus load to the nearby lake system Vansjön ? Nordsjön.

The metal mining history goes thousands of years back. The downside of the mining industry is the large amount of tailings created during the mining operations. Drainage and leaching of heavy metals from these tailings may cause major environmental problems including acid mine drainage and leaching of heavy metals. This study examines a pond located near an old mining site, where part of the old mining facility has been recently (1990) restored. The objective was to assess eventual metal contamination from historical mining and the recently performed restoration using a sediment core as a natural archive of historical metal inputs to the pond.

Arvika Fastighets AB is a municipal subsidiary tasked with managing all green areas in the municipality, with a strong focus on the City Park and plant beds in the city centre. These areas generate large amounts of green waste, which is currently transported to the municipality's composting area at Lycke. Currently, the material is piled up and turned once a year without using the resulting soil for flowerbeds, lawns, and shrub/tree plantings. The purpose of the study is to determine if Arvika can compost the green waste in a more efficient manner and produce weed-free soil ready to be mixed into various substrates for different purposes. Interviews with the Swedish Church and several municipalities in Sweden have been conducted to learn from their experiences and knowledge of how they make their composting work.

The increasing oil prices during the last years have made it profitable to use cereal grains as a fuel. When compared with wood, cereals contain higher amounts of Cl, S and ash. The Cl and S content makes the gases from cereal combustion more corrosive than gases from wood combustion. The goal of this master thesis was to find out the variation of Cl, S and ash content for oat grain grown under different conditions. Oats was chosen because in Sweden it's considered as the cereal with the best fuel qualities.

This study has taken place in two nature reserves in the municipality of Uppvidinge in the Kronoberg region in southern Sweden. These have been chosen by the County Administrative Board to be part of a bigger landscape of fire affected nature, and prescribed fire has been implemented in these. The areas are called Ösjöbol and Berga fly and have been burned 2012 and 2013 respectively. Non-burned areas have been inventoried as well. Vascular plants and mineral soil have been inventoried with the Hult-Sernander-Du Rietz scale of five levels. Issues emanate from the County Administrative Board?s goals for prescribed fire: how sticks and herbs were affected, how much soil was uncovered, how the structure and fire favoured species were affected, and how deciduous trees and spruces (Picea abies) were affected. The study shows that the soil increased, as well as the fire favoured species.

The eutrophication of inshore seas, lakes and watercourses is mainly due to leaching of nitrogen and phosphorus (P) from agriculture. Many efforts are made to reduce the lea-kage of phosphorus in Sweden and the Baltic Sea countries. Phosphorus is also a finite resource and the mining of good quality raw material gets more and more difficult. Se-dimentation dams in combination with filters is one relatively new method to separate P from run-off and drainage water from agricultural land. This study was a part of an IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute?s project which tests the capacity and func-tion for separation of phosphorus in four phosphorus filters.

Calcareous fens constitute a specific habitat which is uncommon in Europe and protected by the EU habitat directive due to its importance to several threatened species. Hagebyhöga in Östergötland is a calcareous fen habitat included in the Natura 2000 Networking Programme. Adjacent to the existing fen, a degraded fen area is situated. The area has been used for agriculture for several years but is now going to be restored to its former state by the county administrative board of Östergötland.When working with restoration of degraded fen areas it is important to aquire knowledge about the chemical soil conditions. Plant growth limited by phosphorus and low fertility are characteristic conditions for calcareous fens, whilst arable land usually is highly fertile and limited by nitrogen.The purpose of this study is to bring forth useful knowledge for restoring the degraded calcareous fen of Hagebyhöga.

Today cultivation of cereal in Sweden has high costs for establishment in relation to the rest of the world, and if this cultivation will be able to continue, the farmers have to control their costs. It is important to see all costs, not the maximum harvest achieved, but the net result. All farmers have different conditions with respect to soil, direction of the farm and were the farm is located geographically. With the right knowledge and ambitions, we think most farmers could change to reduced tillage. In this paper we have tried to find out if reduced tillage is an alternative for farmers.

To guarantee the customers a job satisfactory executed Sydved has been certified by the ISO 14001 standard. One part of the certification is the standards of soil damages. The soil damages were over represented during 1999 and 2000. It was therefore a need to study the problem in order to see what could be done to reduces these damages. A filed study was carried out on 21 subjectively selected stands from the following five districts: Vänersborg, Falköping, Borås, Jönköping and Åseda. As the study is a descriptive study of the soil damages, their character and extension, only stands were tracks were reported were considered.

This study was carried out in Jordan with the purpose to investigate the bacterial microflora of egg shells from cage systems and from deep litter floor systems. Another aim wasto get a general impression of the hygiene, at farm level, of egg production in Jordan andthe factors affecting it.Eggs from two cage systems and three floor systems were analyzed, regarding bacterialcontamination of the egg shells. Egg samples were taken from the storage room, the eggcradle in the cage system and from the nest and floor in the floor system. To get a generalimpression of the hygiene at the farms, swab tests and air tests were performed. Swab testswere performed with a sterile cotton swab at the same units as the eggs were sampled andair tests were performed by opening petri dishes where the hens were staying.

The increasing threat of climate change has led to a increased need for models to predict future climat. In these models the changes in the soil carbon pools due to changes in microbiel degradation of the organic matter can lead to both positive and negative feedback-effects. There is however a lack of consensues on the temperature respons on degradation soil organic matter. This paper aim to give a better understanding on the factors controlling the temperature respons. The factors studied were the carbon substrate qualitity and the physiological status of the microorganisms.

The main project Dry preservation of source-separated organic household wastes involves a new technique for treatment of biowaste through drying. Investigations are going on to determine how the dried biowaste best can be used to close the natural circular flow of nutrients. The objective of this degree project is to determine if the dried biowaste can be used as a soil conditioner. By restoring the nutrients in the material to the ground, the natural circular flow is closed. A declaration of contents, including the nutrient levels, C/N ratio, pH and the electrical conductivity of the dried biowaste, was constructed and a germination test was done to make sure that the material did not inhibit sprouting.