Långsiktig hållbarhet i det urbana trädbeståndet vid klimatförändringar

Sommaren 2018 drabbades Sverige av den längsta värmebölja som uppmätts sedan 1941. Klimatförändringarna höjer den globala medeltemperaturen och värmeböljorna förväntas bli fler och längre för varje år. De urbana miljöerna växer och därav blir de hårdgjorda ytorna fler. Hårdgjorda ytor lagrar värme vilket gör att temperaturen höjs lokalt och värmeöar skapas. De förhöjda temperaturerna bidrar till att de inhemska trädarterna kan få försämrad vitalitet samt minskad eller ingen leverans av ekosystemtjänster då de är vana vid en sval och fuktig naturmiljö. För att skapa långsiktig hållbarhet behövs välmående träd som är anpassade till ståndorten i den urbana miljön, detta för att skapa resilienta trädbestånd som kan leverera ekosystemtjänster samt bevara den biologiska mångfalden. Arbetets syfte är att undersöka risker och möjligheter med icke inhemska trädarter i den svenska urbana miljön kopplat till de pågående klimatförändringarna. För att svara på syftet har en enkätstudie samt en intervjustudie genomförts. Enkätstudien omfattar 18 svenska kommuner och intervjustudien sex personer med kunskap inom trädfrågor. Informanterna i studierna värnar om att använda inhemska trädarter på ståndorter där de kan trivas i den urbana miljön, framför allt för att gynna den biologiska mångfalden. De belyser även vikten av att använda icke inhemska trädarter i den urbana miljön på de ståndorter som är utmanande för de inhemska träden. Det finns dock en viss rädsla kopplat till import av icke inhemska träd, som införsel av sjukdomar och skadedjur samt eventuell invasivitet. För att träd ska kunna leverera maximalt med ekosystemtjänster behöver de en hög vitalitet samt många år att växa till sig, vilket är en process som kräver långsiktig planering, kunskap och ekonomiska resurser. Av resultatet går att utläsa att informanterna framhåller vikten av samarbeten mellan olika aktörer och yrkesgrupper för att få en bred kunskap inom ämnet.In the summer of 2018, Sweden was affected by the longest heat wave measured since 1941. Climate change raises the global average temperature and the heat waves are expected to be more common every year and last for a long time. The urban environments are growing and as a result, the areas with hardened surfaces are increasing. Hardened surfaces store heat which results in locally increased temperatures that create heat islands. The elevated temperatures contribute to reduced vitality in native tree species as well as reduced or no delivery of ecosystem services as they are used to cool and humid natural environments. To create long-term sustainability, healthy trees that are adapted to the location in the urban environment are needed. This creates resilient tree stands that can deliver ecosystem services and preserve biodiversity. The purpose of this work is to investigate risks and opportunities with the use of non-native tree species in the Swedish urban environment; taking into consideration actual climate change. To answer the purpose, a survey study and an interview study were conducted. The survey study includes 32 Swedish municipalities and the interview study includes six informants who have knowledge in tree issues. The informants in the studies emphasize the importance of using native tree species in sites where they can thrive in the urban environment and benefit biological diversity. They also highlight the importance of using non-native tree species in the urban environment in the sites that are challenging for the native trees. There is a certain fear associated with non-native trees such as the introduction of diseases, pests and possible invasiveness. In order for trees to be able to deliver maximum ecosystem services, they need high vitality and many years to grow which is a process that requires long-term planning, knowledge and financial resources. The results show that several informants emphasize the importance of collaboration between different actors and professional groups in order to gain broad knowledge on the subject

Green feed in the marine fish farming

Global catch fishery is said to been oppressed to its limit (Boyd & Schmittou, 1999), further implying aquaculture might be the only solution to the world demand for fishery products. The applied term aquaculture in this paper refers to the one used by NOAA (2008); breeding, rearing, and harvesting of plants and animals in all kind of water environments, including but not limited to ponds, rivers, lakes, and the ocean. According to Shamshak & Anderson (2008, p. 74) aquaculture has over the past 20 years been the fastest growing food sector with an average annual growth rate of 8.7%. It further represents approximately 37 % (Shamshak & Anderson, 2008, p. 73) of total fisheries production worldwide. But even though aquaculture has taken off, the practice has its critics. The industry must counter criticism about the lack of sustainability. If the industry is able to successfully do this, the farming technique can more easily fulfill its potential role as a world food supplier (Boyd &, Schmittou, 1999). But first the aquaculture industry needs better environmental management for a continued growth. One practice that needs to be curtailed is the choice of using unsustainable (limited) and expensive fishmeal and fishoil. The challenge is to identify more environmentally friendly and cheap substitutes for the unsustainably fishmeal and fishoil. Several trials have been made to reduce the quota of unsustainable fishmeal in farming the deep blue, and where e.g. feed has been substituted to one extend by soybeanmeal. Nonetheless, it is crucial that the substitutes for fishmeal and fishoil maintain both the quality and quantity of production that the original products achieve. Also, further importance and essentials must be paid to make these practices transparent to the industry’s stakeholders. Pittenger et al., (2007, p. 98) has shown that advances in both feed formulation and feed management on a farm level have led to increased fish growth, reduced production costs, and reduced feed conversion ratios but where research is still in progress to continue developing alternative feed ingredients. Of importance is to note that even though progress has been made in identifying substitutes for fishmeal and fish oil, there is currently no commercially available product that can completely substitute for fishmeal and fishoil (Ibid). A fish farm needs to efficiently deal with the environmental issues it causes, or the effects will be deleterious. This thesis shows that less use of fishmeal (substituted by Soybean Protein Concentrate) can improve waterquality in some parameters used in this thesis. Further this thesis shows how sustainable benchmarks (with respect to watermetrics) efficiently can be managed and communicated to the industry’s stakeholders by business managers. A farm managed with environmental awareness and a willingness to share the experiences in the process of finding a more sustainable production method (also referred as the case farm in this thesis) is; Kona Blue Water Farm, HI, USA

Perceived personal safety in relation to urban woodland vegetation – A review

Urban woodland vegetation provides people with many aesthetic, ecological and psychological benefits, but can also generate problems concerning people’s perception of safety. This paper reviews existing knowledge about perceived personal safety in relation to vegetation, particularly woodland vegetation, in urban green spaces such as parks and residential areas. Individual and social factors, but also vegetation character, maintenance and design, proved to be important for perceived personal safety. Vegetation-related aspects identified as being of particular importance include landscape design, possibilities for overview and control, vegetation density, and vegetation character and maintenance. Vegetation of an open character with low density undergrowth might have positive effects on perceived personal safety without reducing other benefits. Issues for future research include context-based studies to consider several aspects of vegetation and their interactions

Travel Decision-making: The Role of Habit

The complexity of travel decision making is widely recognized and has previous been studied by the means of grand models and process studies. This study has used the Self-Reported Habit Index of Verplanken and Orbell (2003) to measure habit strength in 23 statements concerning travel decision making. The four sub-decisions of particular interest in this study were; where and when to go on vacation, what to do, as well as how to travel to the chosen destination. The developed instrument unfolds a well recognized structure of travel behavior, results which validate the statements of SRHI and its applicability to the field of tourism. This research adds to the field of travel decision making by emphasizing the possibility to identify sub-decisions that are made out of habit and to use habit as a platform for tourist segmentation

Debatten om Sprutbytet i Svensk Dagspress - i sökandet av ett brukarperspektiv

Author: Therese Ekheim and Staffan Jansson Title: The needle syringe debate in Swedish newspaper – in search of a user perspective. [Translated title] Supervisor: Frans Oddner Assessor: Mats Hilte The aim of this study was to examine how syringe drug users are produced in Swedish newspaper in the needle exchange debate. More specifically its aim was to identify how the user perspective is given a certain space and study the consequences the petitions of the drug users could give and to see if there was any differences in how the drug user were explored depending on whether one is for or against syringe exchange, or if one is ambivalent in their arguments. As the study was based on a discourse analysis we only studied articles about the needle exchange debate. The aim with our method was to found the patterns in the statements about the debate on syringe exchange that was written in the articles seeing from a user perspective. We selected articles from newspapers from Sweden’s three largest cities. We found that the user perspective was missing in the most of the articles, and that the production of the users was different depending on what the articles were focusing on. The most articles had their focus on the location of the needle syringe program and the effects of the use of drugs such as infection, which are two debated areas that had a negative image of the drug users. All the articles besides two didn’t have any focus on the user perspective, which is a kind of stigma. The drug users is already a group of people that mostly are standing outside our society, and by not mention the group or mention the group in a negative image is a result of stigma. Media has power in a way that they are choosing what they want to publish and also how they decide to illustrate something, which we could see in which way the drug users were illustrated in the articles

Differentiation as a Consequence of Choice and Decentralization Reforms—Conditions for Teachers’ Competence Development

This paper examines the conditions for teacher competence development as they relate to the current restructured governance of the education sector in Sweden. In reviewing the literature, contextual factors in the workplace are often pointed out as central to conditions for competence development. However, we argue that a sector-level approach is useful in examining and explaining competence development conditions, especially in times of governance change. We describe how a workplace’s geographical location and budgetary situation, along with its size and age, relate to how teachers experience their working conditions. The findings indicate that the organization of work at a local workplace level impacts the conditions for competence development. Moreover, various regional and local characteristics seem to affect the conditions for competence development in that the organization and governance of the education sector create different conditions for competence development

Lärka – ett verktyg för träning av språkterminologi och grammatik

Lärka is a corpus-based tool, which allows students to practise and learn grammatical terminology (such as parts of speech and syntactical categories) and semantics while practicing their analytical skills based on authentic material. In this study we present how this has been used at four universities. We also use our logs to try to assess the students’ metalinguistic awareness in relation to international studies, and discuss how these logs can be used in the future

The Antibacterial Effect <em>In Vitro</em> of Honey Derived from Various Danish Flora

The mechanism behind the biologic actions of honey as a wound remedy has been intensively studied; however, there is no published data regarding any antibacterial effect of honey derived from Danish flora. We surveyed 11 honeys of various Danish floral sources for their antibacterial activity and compared them to a culinary processed commercial honey (Jakobsens) and a raw and a medical grade Manuka (Leptospermum scoparium) honey using the agar-well diffusion method. We tested the effect on three gram-positive bacteria (two strains of Staphylococcus aureus and one strain of Staphylococcus epidermidis) and two gram-negative bacteria (Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli). All samples, except the commercial honey, exhibited antibacterial activity, and samples derived from Water Mint (Mentha aquatica), Organic 2 (mixed organic flora), and Linden (Tilia cordata) honey had consistent effects on all bacteria tested and showed greater effect than medical grade and raw Manuka (L. scoparium) honey. The content of methylglyoxal was low in the Danish honey (< 2 μg/mL) and significantly (p<0.05) higher in both the raw and the medical grade Manuka (L. scoparium) honey, where the concentrations were, respectively, 6.29 μg/mL and 54.33 μg/mL. The antibacterial effect of Danish honeys was mostly due to hydrogen peroxide. We conclude that honeys derived from Danish flora possess antibacterial effect, probably by a hurdle effect of viscosity, osmolality, acidity, bioactive peptides, and most importantly the content of hydrogen peroxide. These findings indicate that honeys of various Danish floral sources may have clinical potential, although further studies are necessary to elucidate this in order to determine whether the results of our in vitro experiments also apply to a clinical setting