Research suggests that society's vulnerability to natural disasters along coasts could increase as a result of climate change, which is likely to lead to elevated sea levels and possibly an increase in the occurance of meteorological phenomena such as storms and tropical cyclones. Following the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, both of which received considerable media attention, empirical data has indicated that coastal vegetation might be able to protect and reduce damages to coastal communities during tsunami events and tropical cyclones.The aim of the essay has been to study the function of coastal ecosystems as protection against tsunami waves and storms from a risk management perspective, meaning that I have, through an overview of scientific articles, compiled current research on how coastal ecosystems can attenuate storm surges and tsunami waves, and analysed how this knowledge can be put into practice in coastal communities from a risk management perspective, i.e. if coastal ecosystems are a viable risk reduction measure, are practically applicable, and if so, how they could be applied.There is empirical evidence suggesting that coastal ecosystems, particularly mangroves, can reduce the strength of a tsunami wave, but full scientific consensus on this issue has not yet been reached. With regard to protection against storm surges, there is extensive scientific evidence that coastal vegetation can mitigate damages and reduce the height of a storm surge, although the wave has to traverse several kilometres inland through thick vegetation for the protection to be effective. A synthesis in the form of a figure regarding the many physical factors that influence wave development through coastal ecosystems has been created in an attempt to simplify and explain the phenomenon.The conservation and restoration of coastal ecosystems can be justified from a risk management perspective, but planting new forest belts for the purpose of disaster mitigation is quite unrealistic and can rarely be sustainable, since, for protection to be effective, the forest belt must extend several kilometres inland from the coast, and would thus likely prove difficult to implement along coastal societies..

Hundratusentals ton vägsalt, natriumklorid, sprids ut på våra vägar vintertid för att skapa säkra trafikförhållanden. Men vintervägunderhållning och vägsaltsanvändning kan bidra till förstöring av de naturliga och interna processerna i angränsande mark och vegetation. Vägsalt sprids från vägen på olika sätt, till exempel genom att plogas bort, att det skvätter från fordon, genom avrinning, eller till och med via vinden. Salt sprider sig lösligt i grundvatten eller ytvatten som natrium- och kloridjoner och rör sig vidare i marken eller ackumuleras inom den. Klimat, väderförhållande, landskapets utformning och användning, trafikmängd och vägunderhåll är faktorer som påverkar både saltåtgången och spridningsvägarna.

The increasing competition is making increasing demands of today's businesses to be changeable. Change projects have therefore become increasingly common in order to satisfy market expectations. These projects have often proved difficult to implement and fail rather than succeed. There are many people who reflect on why this is and theorists are increasingly reasoning about the importance of communication in the change process. This is something that has given rise to a new area of expertise called change management.

University of VäxjöSchool of Social SciencesBachelor Thesis in Political ScienceTitle: ?Sverigedemokraternas valframgångar 2006 ? En ulv i fårakläder??Author: Emma Haraldsson and Åsa NeuschützTutor: Emil UddhammarThe aim of this study is to explain Sverigedemokraterna?s electoral success in 2006 and the essay assumes that some form of change has occurred. To study this change two hypotheses have been constructed. The first hypothesis concerns the change within Sverigedemokraterna and the second hypothesis concerns the change of the Swedish voters attitudes.Kirchheimers catch-all theory is used to explain the change in Sverigedemokraterna. The catch-all theory states that parties have to change their structure to maximise the number of votes.

This study takes place within a publicly owned art producing organization and dwells on the problems of a change process that the organization was involved in. Both leaders and staff were disappointed by the way the change process had developed. The management team explained the outcome by referring to the uniqueness of working with artists who constantly put their own personal objectives before the benefit of the whole. The aim of this study is to find a complementary explanation to the one the management team provided us with; an explanation that can help in the understanding of the dynamics of a change process. Can perhaps theories on information, communication and change processes give an alternative explanation to why the change process faltered? To investigate this, we have used a qualitative single case study.

The essay discusses the effects that changes to the office plan have on organizational culture. Information about actual change as well as expected change in organizational culture was gathered before the empirical research was initiated. The empirical research was carried out at the Customer Logistics department at Ericsson through: an interview with a manager in charge of the relocation and design of the office, a manager for the specified department and also five employees of this department. The empirical studies show that there was a significant change in organizational culture and that results were not always as expected. There was a loss in symbolic actions, which needed to be compensated for, a perceived reduction in spontaneous communication, and a mixed response of perceived change in social interaction.

Den här studien undersöker hur vegetationen förändras mellan 1979 och 2010 i området som idag är Hornborgasjöns naturreservat. Sjösänkningar i området ledde till att ett igenväxt träskområde ersatte en viktig vattenreservoar och närsaltfälla. Restaureringsarbetet under 80-talet var banbrytande och antagligen ett av vår tids mest omfattande naturvårdsarbete. Studien svarar också på om restaureringen uppnådde sitt mål och om resultatet blev som man tänkt sig.I arbetet skapades en aktuell vegetationskarta för 2010, denna jämfördes med en i arbetet digitaliserad vegetationskarta från 1979. Kartbilder skapades och justerades i ArcGIS och vegetationsytornas area framtogs för att möjliggöra en vegetationsanalys mellan kartorna.

Title: Change Communication within organizations ? How perceptions differ between managers and employees in an organizational changeAuthor: Emma Ender & Fanny TeschTutor: Anne-Marie MorhedPurpose: The purpose of this thesis was to study and compare different perceptions of change communication between managers and employees within two smaller organizations. We wanted to examine how the communication process within the change was carried out. We also aimed to compare the results with change communication models of Johansson & Heide (2008) and Lewin (1951), and also existing concepts, to see if our result differed from earlier research. Our key questions to answer were: How do managers communicate a change to the employees in two smaller companies? How do the managers think that the employees perceive the information about the change? How do the employees perceive the information about the change? How does change models from previous research correspond to, or differ from the change process?Method/Material: The material used in this thesis consists of a total of twelve interviews with both managers and employees at two small companies.Main results: The main results shows that communicating a change is complex, and that it is difficult to create models and theories for the phenomenon, as each change is unique.

The essay discusses a process of change at probationservice office. The purpose of the change was to decrease specialisation and increase flexibility of the probation officers. The change encountered several problems where the correctional supervisor was percieved to act unsurely and indecisively whilst parts of the staff constructed and implimented several courses of action to prevent the process of change..

In non-profit organizations, surplus of the organization goes back to the organization's members. We have noted that Hyresgästföreningen initiated a change in 2005 when the organization merged its local membership registries to a national registry. There are few studies explaining how non-profit organizations are using management in an organizational change. What happens with the business management at an organizational change that is similar to the change in Hyresgästföreningen? The aim of this thesis is to explore how the governance of a nonprofit organization is changing at an organizational change.

In 1992, the European Union began institutionalizing the cooperation against terrorism within the EU structure. Since then, this cooperation has gone through a number of changes. From a historical institutionalistic point of departure we explain these changes by identifying sources of institutional resilience and institutional change. Based on these results, we were able to pose hypotheses of when and what category of change was most likely to take place.The results show that the cooperation against terrorism within the EU was most likely to remain stable because of strong sources of institutional resilience. If change would occur through an increase in the sources of institutional change, it was most likely to be of a less extensive category.

The Swedish Armed Forces have undergone a significant change where we have gone from recruitment through duty and replaced it with a voluntary based defence. Across Europe, countries that have undergone the same type of change demonstrate change in the quality of those recruited. The focus in this paper is how recruitment quality looks in Sweden after three years of volunteer based defence and if officers at P7 can see a change in quality on those recruited. This work aims to investigate whether soldier quality has changed from conscription recruited to voluntary recruited soldiers. The question that the work tries to answer is whether one can see a change in quality in soldiers and in that case how.The result can be summarized as one begins to see a change in recruiting quality but it is not something that is visible at the regiments.

To better understand how various factors affect the establishment of forest and trees around the tree line-ecotone, this study was conducted in Troms County, Norway. The altitude of different forest and tree limits together with the surrounding vegetation type were collected during August 2011. Comparisons of the collected data were made with previously collected data from the same sites conducted 1914 and 1915. On average the forest limit has expanded with 26 meters in altitude, however, an expansion is not statistically significant for the whole area. The tree limit has significantly expanded in altitude.

The vegetation?s impact on erosion control is widely explored, even though research? results are scattered where it suggests a both positive and negative relationship between roots and erosion tendency. Research has measured the roots? impact on erosion by many different methods, hence the aim of this study is to offer a clearance of what factors play an important role in the choice of appropriate species controlling river bank erosion. I have therefore studied 17 articles concerning vegetation and erosion control, which were found in different databases such as: Web of Knowledge, Biological Sciences, Academic Search Elite and Google Scholar.

University of VäxjöSchool of Social SciencesBachelor Thesis in Political ScienceTitle: ?Sverigedemokraternas valframgångar 2006 ? En ulv i fårakläder??Author: Emma Haraldsson and Åsa NeuschützTutor: Emil UddhammarThe aim of this study is to explain Sverigedemokraterna?s electoral success in 2006 and the essay assumes that some form of change has occurred. To study this change two hypotheses have been constructed. The first hypothesis concerns the change within Sverigedemokraterna and the second hypothesis concerns the change of the Swedish voters attitudes.Kirchheimers catch-all theory is used to explain the change in Sverigedemokraterna. The catch-all theory states that parties have to change their structure to maximise the number of votes.