The overall aim is to examine how the European Union Water Framework Directive has affected the local water management in the catchment Märstaån situated in the eastern part of the lake Mälaren river basin, Sweden. The first part of the study gives an historical overview of the area with focus on how the old agricultural landscape was handling the nutrient load from farming activities by means of different kinds of wetlands. By using the concept of the procedural landscape, introduced by Torsten Hägerstrand , together with historical maps with dates starting from the 17th century, the pre-modern landscape is analyzed.  The second part is an investigation, based on qualitative data, on how the different actors in the catchment area work together to secure the water quality for the Märstaån river. The analysis shows that the Märstaån catchment river systems are mostly unchanged in the rural areas.  The exception is the mainstream section of the Märstaån river running partly underground today and the Halmsjöbäcken river that is heavily affected by the Arlanda airport situated within the catchment area.

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.

Water related problems are highlighted as a challenge to sustainable development and the topic of forests and water is gaining increased attention worldwide. Governing forest and water is a complex issue, as the interactions are affected by policies and actors from multiple levels and sectors. In Sweden, forests cover much of the land and forestry is an important land-use, inevitably impacting the water in the landscape. This study aims to understand and explain the existing governance framework around forestry and water in Sweden. Based on the Policy Arrangement Approach, the study?s research questions focused on the actors involved, the formal and informal rules, the resources and power structures and the discourses related to forestry and water in Sweden.

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.

This essay aims to explore continuity in water centric cult within the period of the Christianization of Scandinavia (ca 800-1100 AD) and to understand the changing of symbolism of water in pre-Christian cult and early Christian religion. It has previously been thought that Christian priests took over the old holy wells and renamed them after saint, all to ease the pagan people into a Christian lifestyle. But archaeological evidence shows that the cult at these wells, and other water centric sites, where almost completely abandoned a few hundred years before the Christians came to Scandinavia. The Christians should not have felt the need to transform this tradition since it was only practiced in a very small and supposedly private scale. On the contrary, religious activities at these wells seems to increase with the new religion and perhaps this is explained by Christianity itself.

In this study potential health risks for employees in connection with handling of bottom ash and bottom ash water at a Municipal Waste Incineration (MWI) plant have been investigated. Air surrounding the bottom ash and the bottom ash water has been examined. MWI is one of the primary ways to manage solid household waste, and bottom ash is the main solid residue produced by the incineration process. Bottom ash constitutes about 15-20% of the original waste. The bottom ash is extinguished in a water bath (bottom ash water).The study was carried out in a MWI plant in Karlstad, Sweden.

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.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to find out how pupils give expression of a water cycle model and if the model causes any misunderstanding. Two problems constitute the starting point for this investigation. The first question is: how do the pupils explain the water cycle with the help of the jar model (can of glass). The other question is: can the children see any similarities between the can of glass and our earth. Qualitative semi structured interviews with seven pupils in the ages of 8-9 have been used to show the pupils? own thoughts and how they express them.

In Sweden there are 1894 small-scale hydropower plants in operation, which together generate 4.3 TWh of electricity per year according to Swedish hydropower compound (SVKF, 2011). This corresponds to the annual consumption of about 860,000 Swedish households (based on an annual consumption of 5000 kWh). In the mid-1950s there were around 4000 small-scale hydropower plants in operation in Sweden before cheap fossil fuels and uranium competed with them, in the current situation only 1,894 of these are in use. If slumbering small hydropower plants once again would be taken into use and some new ones are built, we would be able to extract about 7 TWh of renewable electricity from these annually in Sweden, representing about 1.4 million households.The thesis intends to calculate and construct a hydroelectric power plant at the existing dam in Olofsfors and give suggestions on how the power station should run during the time that fish migration is greatest in Leduån.The turbine and generator to the station in Leduån at Olofsfors is designed by the height of the fall and the water flow through the dam. The turbine selected for the station is a CK-1000RM turbine with a 4-pole 250 kW generator from Cargo & power turbine Sweden AB, which is expected to deliver 1.2 GWh per year.

Turbiditet är ett mått på partikelinnehåll i dricksvatten samt ett sätt att beskriva vattenkvaliteten. Vattentäkten i Gäddvik, Luleå kommun, har periodvis hög turbiditet. Syftet med examensarbetet är att utreda orsaker till turbiditet i dricksvatten, från Gäddviks vattentäkt till konsumenter i Luleå kommun. Målet är att ge svar på vilken typ av partiklar som orsakar turbiditen. Analyser utfördes före och efter filtrering av dricksvatten.

Mosquitoes are found in extremely large numbers in the lower parts of the River Dalälven. In the year 2000 the mosquito nuisance was especially high, resulting in foundation of the Biological mosquito control project. Since 2001 mosquito larvae are controlled by using a biological pesticide BTI (Bacillus thuringiensis ssp israelensis). The mosquito fauna in the area is dominated by flood water mosquitoes, a group of mosquitoes that are very aggressive and form new generations of mosquitoes during every single flooding event during the summer. To be able to efficiently control the mosquitoes it is essential to know the extension and locality of the flooding.

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.

This thesis raises the problem with acid mine drainage around the closed mine Finngruvan.The purpose of the investigation was to compare metal content in surface water in the areaand its catchments between year 2010 and 2003, also to make calculation of specific runoffand metal load, furthermore determine the recipients in the area. Surface water samplingwhere preformed at the same place as 2003 and also at a few other places of interest. Adigital elevation file were used in GIS to calculate the area of the watersheds in the region,observations in the field where also made. The collected data were used to make comparisons,calculations and conclusions. The result showed that the surface water 2010 had somewhatlower metal concentrations.

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.

In recent years, existing solutions for cooling personal computer CPUs have been supplemented by a new product category, factory sealed water cooling loops. These systems, consisting of a water block with an integrated pump, a fan and a radiator, perform well compared to the air cooling solutions but are less effective than larger, custom-built water cooling systems.This project aims to explore the most important aspects of a factory sealed system and to identify possible cost-effective enhancements of the performance.The most significant differences between the different groups of water cooling loops are the block design and the pumping power. The performance of both categories is also largely dependent on the fan power, but increasing fan power has a large negative impact on the noise level.Both radiator size and fan model choice appear, in tests, to be relatively unimportant, presuming that the noise level is kept constant. The position and direction of the fan, however, has significant impact on both the temperature and the sound level.Water blocks can be designed in several different ways, both regarding the heatsink design and the flow direction. In simulation, flow with the inlet centered above the heatsink result in considerably lower pressure drop and slightly higher temperatures than flow through the block, for heatsinks with fin arrays.Creating a competitive product in this product segment certainly seems possible, as there are performance-increasing changes to be made that seemingly has little impact on the production cost.