Sand and gravel are compounds that are directly needed in the fine fraction of making concrete. Concrete is used as a foundation in 90 % of the cases when establishing new buildings in Sweden. Usually, sand and gravel are taken from land based areas. These land based areas with sand and gravel are also needed for the cleaning of the groundwater. Groundwater is the source of drinking water in big parts of Sweden and should therefore not be jeopardized. In the marine environment, there are areas that possess sand and gravel that could be used instead of land based material, and therefore will not jeopardize the quality of drinking water. By learning how the law is regulated in marine sand and gravel extraction cases, looking at existing maps of the marine geology’s structure, learning about the environmental impacts and by looking at the technique that are used for extracting the material of the bottom of the ocean - this report shows the possibilities of marine sand and gravel extraction of the ocean floor outside of Umeå’s coastline. The result shows that there are a few areas that have the right material and lies on the right depth of the ocean floor, but these areas did not have the right thickness. Therefore, an extraction of marine sand and gravel at these areas (Area A and B) would affect the volume percentage. This could lead to a change of the bottom structure that destroys the recovery after the extraction and damage the marine environment.

Copper (Cu) is a heavy metal that is essential for life but toxic at high concentrations. This toxic effect is used on boats to prevent biofouling on boat hulls by painting the hulls with antifouling paint that contain high levels of Cu. The Cu is slowly diffused out in the water and accumulated by animals higher up in the food chain. In order to test the effects of marinas on Cu bioaccumulation in invertebrates, I sampled molluscs at seven marinas and seven shore sites on the Swedish west coast. Two molluscs with different feeding behaviours, one grazer, the periwinkle (Littorina littorea) and one filter feeder, the blue mussel (Mytilus edulis) were used as study organisms. Both species were sampled at each location within 50 m from each other. Body Cu concentration of both species was measured with a Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (FAAS). Cu concentration of periwinkle soft body tissue was generally higher than in mussel soft body tissue. In addition, periwinkle tissue Cu concentration reacted strongly positively to the presence of marinas, whereas mussel tissue Cu concentrations did not. This shows that contamination from marinas affects the grazing periwinkle but not the filter feeding blue mussel. Thus, for biomonitoring purposes, grazers may be more suited as indicator organisms.

Med ett klimat som blir allt varmare kan behovet av nedkylning i fastigheter öka. Bergkyla är ett exempel på en nedkylningsmetod som kan vara ett effektivt sätt att kyla ner fastigheter på som redan använder sig av bergvärme. Då kan samma borrhål användas till båda ändamål; värme under kallare perioder och kyla under varmare. Bergkyla hämtar kyla från berggrunden genom att en köldbärarvätska cirkulerar i slangar nedsänkta i borrhålet. Köldbärarvätskan är varm när den förs ner i borrhålet där den kyls ned och förs därefter tillbaka till anläggningen. Detta utbyte av värmeenergi mellan köldbärarvätskan och berget gör inte bara att köldbärarvätskan sjunker i temperatur, berget runt borrhålet ökar även i temperatur. Om berget runt borrhålet ökar i temperatur kommer även det djupliggande, relikta grundvatten som finns i berggrunden att öka i temperatur. Detta skulle kunna skapa en vertikaltransport av det kloridhaltiga relikta grundvattnet upp till det ytliga grundvattnet, som då kontamineras. Målet med detta projekt var att undersöka huruvida en ökad användning av bergkyla skulle kunna skapa en vertikaltransport av det relikta grundvattnet upp till det ytliga och i sådana fall om detta skulle vara av betydelse för dricksvattenproduktionen i Uppsala. Området som studerades i detta projekt är Sunnersta, där antalet borrhål för bergvärme är många och potentiellt är ett område där många även väljer att installera bergkyla i sina redan befintliga borrhål. Projektet baserades på en litteraturstudie samt fördjupade beräkningar på vertikaltransporten av det relikta grundvattnet. Temperaturökningarna som beräkningarna baserades på var för enskilda borrhål 0,02 grader Celsius, där området runt borrhålet som var påverkat hade en radie på 20 m. För 47 borrhål användes istället temperaturökningen 1,2 grader Celsius, där storleken på det berörda området inte var specificerat. Extremfall för temperaturen i grundvattnet studerades för att se hur flödeshastigheten förändrades och genom det se hur tiden för transporten av det relikta vattnet påverkades. När den förstnämnda temperaturökningen användes så erhölls resultatet att det skulle ta 1750 år. Koncentrationen klorid detta medför i det ytliga grundvattnet blev då 253 mg/l om omblandningen av de båda vattenmassorna skulle ske under ett dygn, samt 75,5 mg/l om omblandningen skulle ske under ett år. Detta jämfördes med 100 mg/l som var riktvärdet för klorid i grundvatten från SGU. Analyserna av resultaten visade att en vertikaltransport kommer ske vid en temperaturökning orsakad av bergkylautvinning. Risken att det relikta grundvattnet skulle kontaminera det ytliga grundvattnet bedömdes dock låg eftersom det skulle krävas antingen väldigt många år för transporten eller osannolikt stora temperaturökningar. Med de antaganden som gjordes fanns stora osäkerheter kring beräkningarna och det främsta utvecklingsområdet bedömdes vara att mer forskning krävs för att kunna dra säkrare slutsatser kring riskerna med bergkyla. / STUNS Energy Stories

The gap between rural and urban is widening in ways that reward urban lifestyles and undermine the interests of rural communities. The asymmetrical power relation between rural and urban is relevant in a Swedish context where Norrland, Sweden's northernmost region, is experiencing outmigration and cutbacks in welfare services all the while urban centers in southern Sweden attract innovation, economic capital and an inflow of young, educated people. This study examines what perceptions of Norrland that are dominating the Swedish media landscape and by doing so aims to investigate how power relations between urban and rural are constructed in the sustainability discourses ecological modernization and the environmental justice framework. The study is based on a discourse analysis of printed articles in the national press and TT news agency over a 10 to 12 years time span. In addition to discourse analysis, a theoretical framework concerning visions of sustainability and urban/rural divisions are applied. The result suggest that the material primarily articulate Norrland as a natural resource base for economic profit and as a site for realizing ideas inherent to the ecological modernization discourse. Resistance against Norrland as a site for production and exploitation are embedded in the environmental justice discourse and shed light on the socially unequal and geographically uneven patterns of injustice.

Ancient DNA (aDNA) is a useful tool for retrospective paleoenvironmental studies. Paleosols formed in Arctic environments constitute a potential archive of aDNA from terrestrial organisms living in past environments, given that the cold and dry climate prevailing at high latitudes favors DNA preservation and hamper post-depositional mobility of deposited fragments. However, to what extent aDNA is preserved in old buried soil layers (paleosol layers) are not well known. This study asses to what extent DNA older than 100 years is present in a paleosol profile from southwest Greenland. My main hypothesis was that aDNA from both plants and animals could be extracted from old buried soil layers. I found that oldest studied soil layers were more than 800 B.P. yr old. These old layers contained DNA from both plants and animals. The clean sampling protocol used showed no signs of contamination, suggesting that the DNA was from soil layers and not from modern contaminants. I conclude that my hypothesis seems valid and that a majority of the analyzed plant and animal DNA is ancient. Indeed, aDNA could be used to infer species presence in past paleoenvironments and widen our knowledge regarding how Arctic organism coped with climatic perturbations and thus, improve our understanding how they will respond to future climatic change.

No description available.

For the first time in history, the global urban population now exceeds the global rural population, meaning that more than 50 % of the world’s population now live in cities. Much attention has been paid to the discourse of sustainable development during the last decades, however, many environmental and social scientists point to an increasing problematic realted to climate change. Greehouse gas emissions are rising, water levels are rising and drought periods are becoming longer, and urban areas are becoming more and more populated. Due to an increasing urbanisation, cities now have the highest demand, compared to rural areas, for food, water, energy and healthcare. At the same time, cities are the biggest threats when it comes to environmental impacts, being responsible for 75 % of all resource consumption and 70 % of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. Drawing from sustainability transition theory, new modes of political governance theory and finally, pragmatist educational theory, this paper attempts to analyze the type of learning taking place in political spaces that exist within an institutional void. Learning, as a concept, is in this paper relating both to the type or learning the participants in the case study are experiencing, as well as what society can learn concerning Urban Sustainability Transitions (USTs). The aim of this paper is to explore theoretically and empirically how political spaces of USTs may function as educative spaces. It poses as its research question: How can pragmatist educational theory be used to understand transition for sustainability in institutional voids? As a case study, Housing Roar Uppsala is investigated as a political space where learning occurs. Two meetings have been recorded and four semi- structured interviews have been made in order to analyze the conversations using Practical Epistemology Analysis. A dramaturgical analysis has also been made in order to understand the setting and staging in which the meetings took place. The paper identifies as its results that there is a lingering gap, a lack of knowledge, occurring throughout the meetings, which in turn leads to another gap: that nothing is happening within the network. Furthermore, the ultimate purpose of the network does not always correlate with the proximate purposes of the participants. This is a source for the lingering gap. Through these findings, this paper suggests that the structure of the meetings might not always be the most beneficial one when trying to transition into sustainability, however, it might be the only one participants have when faced with complex, wicked issues. Wicked issues are problems that do not have a simple, single solution. It also finds that the type of learning taking place within the network might be a negotiation of purposes between participants. Finally, the paper concludes that, in relation to USTs, the type of learning that is taking place is that perhaps a totally open, nonhierarchical, network-type organization in a completely open setting, that bans political figures and private companies from entering into the conversation is not the most successful way of reaching sustainability.

The Paris Agreement, the recent Special Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Sustainable Development Goals are examples of United Nation’s facilitated calls for urgent climate action and more generally for a rapid transition of society towards sustainability. Since urban personal mobility is a significant contributor to society’s current sustainability challenges, and considering current trends of population growth and urbanisation, there is a strong need to develop enhanced support for urban planning for rapid transitioning to sustainable personal mobility. This thesis is part of a wider effort to develop methodological support for such planning and action. The aim of the thesis is to provide a partial foundation for that wider effort by: (i) identifying and organising prominent research themes related to the above topic; and since previous research points to benefits of a transdisciplinary, multisectoral and multicultural approach, (ii) exploring and addressing the complexity of co-production processes in such contexts; and (iii) analysing the appropriateness of some prominent planning approaches for the desired planning support. The aim is pursued through a systematic literature review, including bibliometric analyses, and two empirical case studies, including workshops, interviews, field studies and feasibility studies. One of the case studies included participants from several countries in the Southern Baltic region and the other case study tested the usefulness of different planning approaches in the local context of Kisumu, Kenya and Gothenburg, Sweden, respectively. The thesis provides a map of some prominent research themes and discusses their relevance to the field of urban planning for rapid transitioning to sustainable personal mobility. The analysis of the identified themes and their development over the past ten years shows that there has been a shift in mobility planning from ’predict and provide’ towards participatory visionary approaches. This, in turn, has led to new challenges, related to, for example, epistemic communities, language and culture. Furthermore, it is seen that sustainability considerations have become increasingly pronounced in the urban mobility planning literature. However, different dimensions of sustainability are often considered individually (e.g. the ecological and social dimensions) and coordinated approaches to sustainable mobility planning are virtually lacking. At the methodological level, the thesis provides a preliminary conceptual framework for analysing complexity in co-production processes with regard to epistemic communities, language and culture, as well as a discussion of the usefulness of four specific planning approaches for the desired planning support, namely the backcasting, transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge, foresighting and SymbioCity approaches. The overall conclusion is that there is a need for research that would show how mobility actors can contribute to resolve pressing issues related to climate change fast enough without compromising other aspects of sustainability, including how temporary trade-offs can be addressed in a strategic way.

Sustainability has become highly prominent, it is an important aspect of the 21st century that is gradually becoming part of everyday life. Urbanisation has also rapidly increased since the 1950s when New York was the only urban area in the world to be considered a megacity due to its extensive population; presently megacities can be found globally with predicted to arise in the future. The growth rate of some of the largest urban areas in the world has been too rapid for some cities to keep up with; resulting in environmental, social, and economic issues growing alongside the urbanisation trend. The implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) wants to work towards reducing and eventually removing such issues at a global scale; reducing the inequalities of the world that are more than often to visible in large urban areas. This thesis aims to examine the SDGs, specifically that of SDG 11 which focuses on cities and human settlements in line with one of the largest urban areas on the planet, Tokyo. An examination of planning and policy documents composed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) in the form of a comparative analysis alongside key criteria taken from SDG 11 will be conducted to gain an insight and understanding of the plans and policies that are working to create a functioning society in Tokyo.

The expansion of an industrial area in Näsudden, Skelleftehamn, will require extensive groundwork. An old landfill in the area, partly consisting of autoclaved aerated concrete (siporex), is intended to be used for constructing the new industrial site. The conditions for how the material can be used is, however, controlled by a variety of parameters. This is a part study of the evaluation of how the masses should be treated. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how the presence of siporex affects the mobility of arsenic and lead in the landfill area. Soil and groundwater samples from 10 sample points from the landfill area were collected and analyzed for its metal content. The results were used for calculating the solid/liquid partition coefficient (Kd) for the desorption of samples with or without siporex. Results indicate that the mobility of arsenic is higher in the samples with siporex due to the higher pH in the leachate. No correlation could be found between the influence of siporex and mobility of lead in this study. Further studies are needed in a controlled environment to assess how siporex affects the mobility of arsenic and lead.