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.

Most of the saw and pulp industries have stored wood nearby their production, the main reason is to have a continuous wood flow to the production. Wet storage of wood is of great importance to keep the wood quality. Without water sprinkling the risk of drying outand decomposition through biological activity increases significantly and will result in a negative effect on future production and quality. One drawback of wet storage of wood is the Leaching of chemical substances into the surrounding recipient. The log yard run-off contains phosphorus, nitrogen, phenols and organic substances. These substances can cause problems for the surrounding environment. The main objective of this project is to gain an understanding of the wet storage used by the Swedish wood industry and estimate the environmental consequences that run-off water will have on the recipient.

Due to excess precipitation that cause runoff, all soils in Sweden naturally leaches nitrogen.High Leaching from arable land is an environmental problem when the runoff reacheswaters. In the international agreement, Baltic Sea Action Plan, the aim is to reduce therunoff of nutrients. Sweden has agreed to reduce its load of e.g. nitrogen to the Baltic Sea.One of the proposed measures is an increased use of site-specific N-fertilization, which hasbeen shown to increase nitrogen use efficiency and therefore also reduce the nitrogen runoff.Either yields are increased with the same total amount of nitrogen, or the total quantityof nitrogen is reduced with preserved yield levels, which is profitable for the farmers.The dynamics of nitrogen Leaching differs between top dressing applications above orbelow the economical optimum. There is a consensus about a difference in the dynamics,but not about its magnitude.

Nitrogen deposition leads to environmental damage in areas where the nitrogen deposition is high. Southwest Sweden receives an annual nitrogen deposition of up to 20 kg N/ha. Nitrogen that is not assimilated by the vegetation is accumulated in the soil, which may lead to nitrogen saturation and an elevated risk of nitrogen Leaching. Nitrogen Leaching from forest areas in southern Sweden has proven to be higher than from agricultural areas, which have been thought to be the main contributors to elevated nitrogen levels in rivers and lakes. The amount of nitrogen that leaches depends on the fraction of the total nitrogen in the soil that consists of nitrate, since nitrate is easily transported through the soil.

The filters used today to purify water are often expensive and the need to find new filter materials is substantial. Studies of pine bark have shown that this is a material that may be used as an alternative to conventional filter materials, such as activated carbon. However, the study of pine bark has shown that a leakage of phenolic compounds may occur when using the material for water purification. Therefore, the purpose of this report is to investigate the release of phenols from pine bark, in order to evaluate the use of pine bark as a filter material. Another assignment is to investigate the amount of metals adsorbed by the filter material.

This thesis was carried out to give some background information to a report of SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) for the Swedish National Rail Administration (Banverket). The requested information was to provide basic data for an environmental impact assessment of the construction of the tunnel through Hallandsås. The aim with the thesis work was to discuss and quantify the Leaching of nitrate and the emission of nitrous oxide from the soil at the groundwater level established through the tunnel project. The nitrogen related processes that could be affected were described and discussed. The different areas where a decreased groundwater level can cause changes in the nitrogen processes are the wet and moist areas.

Eutrophication is an environmental problem that affects more than ten percent of Swedish lakes. Excess nutrients increase the growth of algae, and cause major problems in the ecosystem through oxygen-free bottoms, fish kills, and at worst dead bottoms. Agriculture accounts for 44% of human emissions of phosphorus to lakes and rivers. Leaching occurs of particle bound phosphorus and of dissolved phosphate. The amount of phosphate in the soil solution that may be leached is partly due to the prevailing pH in the soil solution. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the relationship between phosphate solubility and pH was affected by liming.

Increasing attention is being given to acid sulphate soils wherever they occur. The problems that Leaching sulphate soils gives with significant lowerings of pH and mobilization of heavy metals influence large spectra of our society from fisheries to agriculture to construction. Mapping these soils is consequently of great importance and the methods of doing this is very much lacking in function and precision. This study was therefore carried out to investigate whether conductivity in running water can be used as a simple instrument to identify acid sulphate soils in the catchment. 31 coastal streams in the county of Västerbotten were analyzed for different catchment properties such as occurence of marine sediments and basic water chemistry including conductivity and sulphate.

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.

This thesis aims to present the essential background on how to perform climate changeimpact assessments, and to present the results from a climate impact assessment on waterbalance and nitrate Leaching for an arable Swedish soil. The soil is a sandy soil in southwesternSweden, grown with spring cereals. This study is meant to be a benchmark example,and cannot be seen as a regional or national assessment for Sweden, rather as an approachto present and analyze the most important parts of these kinds of assessments.A dynamical simulation model (COUP, Jansson and Karlberg, 2004) was used for thisstudy. The model was parameterized and calibrated against data from an experimental site,located in Mellby in Hallands county, south western Sweden. Measurements were carriedout between 1st of April 1988 and 1st of April 1991.

It is essential to reuse- and recycles residues to decrease the amount of deposit materials and reach sustainable energy use. Two ways to work towards this is to recycle wood ashes to the forest as nutrient compensation and extract biogas from combustion of biomass.The aim with this study was to decide whether wood ashes that been used for biogas upgrading with accelerated carbonation also can be used as a nutrient compensation in the woods according to recommendations from the Swedish Forest Agency (Skogsstyrelsen).The ashes that were used in this study came from Johan Andersson who works at JTI in Uppsala, who also treated the ashes with biogas. The ashes have, in both untreated and treated condition, been analyzed in this study according to contents of elements, Leaching properties, hardening properties and contents of crystalline phases, to evaluate what impact carbonation with biogas has on the ashes.The accelerated carbonation led to hardening of the ash, and decreased amount of CaO- and increased amount of CaCO3. The CO2-uptake also entails a dilution of the elements, and the content of nutrients and trace elements decreases. However the results show an indication of an uptake of S from the biogas to the ash, since the dilution had a smaller impact on S than the rest of the elements.

The Baltic Sea is threatened by eutrophication that largely is due to nutrient Leaching from farmland within the catchment area. To solve this problem the surrounding countries cooperate within various configurations such as HELCOM and the EU-financed project Baltic Compass. Poor manure management in Russia has been discussed frequently the last couple of years. A literature review of different types of reports and legal acts is the core of this degree project which has been performed in connection to two ongoing research projects financed by EU (Baltic Compass) and SIDA. It is supplemented with interviews with Swedish agricultural consultants and travel reports from two occasions when I had the opportunity to discuss with Russians active within the agricultural sector. Different hypotheses were investigated and discussed. The environmental debate in Russia is quiet and there is a widespread approach that economic profit always trumps environmental concern ? a Soviet heritage that influence the Russian agriculture considerably. The Russian legal acts on stable manure management focus mainly on sanitary questions and only secondary on nutrient Leaching.

In Sweden, there are limits to how much leachable substances waste must contain in order to be deposited as hazardous waste. Fly ash from waste incineration often end up over the limit, mainly due to the chloride content. Fly ash is therefore often deposited abroad. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility to handle fly ash locally. To clarify how the law is applied, environmental reports and permit documents from ten waste sites with permission to deposit fly ash were studied.

It is essential to reuse- and recycles residues to decrease the amount of deposit materials and reach sustainable energy use. Two ways to work towards this is to recycle wood ashes to the forest as nutrient compensation and extract biogas from combustion of biomass.The aim with this study was to decide whether wood ashes that been used for biogas upgrading with accelerated carbonation also can be used as a nutrient compensation in the woods according to recommendations from the Swedish Forest Agency (Skogsstyrelsen).The ashes that were used in this study came from Johan Andersson who works at JTI in Uppsala, who also treated the ashes with biogas. The ashes have, in both untreated and treated condition, been analyzed in this study according to contents of elements, Leaching properties, hardening properties and contents of crystalline phases, to evaluate what impact carbonation with biogas has on the ashes.The accelerated carbonation led to hardening of the ash, and decreased amount of CaO- and increased amount of CaCO3. The CO2-uptake also entails a dilution of the elements, and the content of nutrients and trace elements decreases. However the results show an indication of an uptake of S from the biogas to the ash, since the dilution had a smaller impact on S than the rest of the elements.

It is essential to reuse- and recycles residues to decrease the amount of deposit materials and reach sustainable energy use. Two ways to work towards this is to recycle wood ashes to the forest as nutrient compensation and extract biogas from combustion of biomass.The aim with this study was to decide whether wood ashes that been used for biogas upgrading with accelerated carbonation also can be used as a nutrient compensation in the woods according to recommendations from the Swedish Forest Agency (Skogsstyrelsen).The ashes that were used in this study came from Johan Andersson who works at JTI in Uppsala, who also treated the ashes with biogas. The ashes have, in both untreated and treated condition, been analyzed in this study according to contents of elements, Leaching properties, hardening properties and contents of crystalline phases, to evaluate what impact carbonation with biogas has on the ashes.The accelerated carbonation led to hardening of the ash, and decreased amount of CaO- and increased amount of CaCO3. The CO2-uptake also entails a dilution of the elements, and the content of nutrients and trace elements decreases. However the results show an indication of an uptake of S from the biogas to the ash, since the dilution had a smaller impact on S than the rest of the elements.