Seed soak-sorting prior to sowing affects the size and quality of 1.5-year-old containerized Picea abies seedlings

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From divide to nexus : Interconnected land use and water governance changes shaping risks related to water

Land use changes have been recognized to have considerable impacts on water; and vice versa, changes in water use and governance may have implications on land use and governance. This study analyzes recent land use/land cover (LULC) changes, and how changes in land use and water governance are perceived to affect land use and water-related risks in three case-study areas exposed to frequent flooding and inadequate or deteriorating water quality. The areas studied included the Vantaa basin in Finland, a section of the Grijalva basin in Mexico, and the Lower Xe Bang Fai basin in Laos. We show how there are complex and context-specific interrelationships between land use, water governance, and water-related risks in each study area. In a remote sensing analysis of LULC changes during the past 30 years, we found that LULC changes have been the most dramatic in Xe Bang Fai, Laos in the form of expanding agriculture and built-up areas; however, there has also been an expansion of built-up areas in the two other sites. According to our stakeholder scenario workshop data, analysis of policy documents and field visits, the nexus between land, water and risks is recognized to some extent in each study area. There have been modest shifts toward more integrated land use and water governance in Vantaa and Grijalva, while the integrated governance seems to have been most absent in Xe Bang Fai. Tighter integration of land and water policies is needed in all the three cases to manage the land use changes in a way that their effects on water-related risks will be minimized.Peer reviewe

Climate change, multiple stressors and human vulnerability : a systematic review

We systematically reviewed current climate change literature in order to examine how multiple processes that affect human vulnerability have been studied. Of the 125 reviewed articles, 79 % were published after 2009. There are numerous concepts that point out to stressors other than climate change that were used in reviewed studies. These different concepts were used interchangeably, and they illustrate processes that act on different scales. Most widely used concepts included non-climatic (40 % of the articles), multiple stressors (38 %) and other factors (37 %). About 75 % of the studies either acknowledged or carefully analyzed the social and environmental context in which vulnerability is experienced. One-third of the studies recognized climate change-related stressors as the most important, one-third argued that stressors other than climate are more important, and the rest of the studies did not analyze the relative importance of the different processes. Interactions between different stressors were mentioned in 76 % and analyzed explicitly in 28 % of the articles. Our review shows that there are studies that analyze the social context of vulnerability within climate change-related literature and this literature is rapidly expanding. Reviewed studies point out that there are multiple interacting stressors, whose interlinkages need to be carefully analyzed and targeted by policies, which integrate adaptation to climate change and other stressors. In conclusion, we suggest that future studies should include analytical frameworks that reflect dissimilarities between different types of stressors, methodological triangulation to identify key stressors and analysis of interactions between multiple stressors across different scales.Peer reviewe

Identifying mismatches between institutional perceptions of water-related risk drivers and water management strategies in three river basin areas

Peer reviewe

Jalostettua kuusensiementä saatiin taas talteen

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