The objective of this thesis was to examine whether forest structure and ground vegetation could explain the habitat choices of the reindeer within similar forest stands. The field work was carried out on 60 sites scattered across a part of the winter grounds for Vilhelmina Norra reindeer herding district. All sites were situated within so-called core and key areas, i.e. areas which the herding district sees as necessary for the reindeer husbandry in the area. Information from GPS-collared reindeer were used to create RIVO (by the Reindeer Identified [as] Important Areas) maps, where areas the reindeer preferred were shown. The results showed that the core and key areas were not significantly different from each other regarding the forest structure, nor the vegetation, but there were some differences in terms of the habitat choice of the reindeer and when the core and key areas were combined with RIVO. The differences concern mainly the coverage of ground lichens, epiphytic lichens and moose presence. Results from other studies suggest that the reindeer habitat selection is dependent on the weather and snow conditions, and looks very different from year to year. The snow conditions are in turn affected by the forest structure, so it is important that the grazing grounds have a heterogeneous forest landscape, including areas which under normal circumstances would not be seen as important for the reindeer husbandry.

The position of countries in the world economy is uneven, therefore core and peripheral areas can be distinguished. However, the identification of factors, which affect economic development and thus the position of a country in the hierarchical system, is more important than the classification itself. Owing to clarity, the factors are divided into three parts: space and resources, population and production. The aim of the thesis is to analyse the most important trends (geographical, demographical and in production) in the world economy in terms of their spatial progress as well as to examine their relationship to the key indicator of the economic level, which is represented by gross domestic product per capita. At first, theoretical approaches concerning the issue are described. On their basis, a pair of indicators representing individual factor is always chosen. Subsequently, these indicators are analyzed at the country level from 1976 to 2010. Their spatial changes are well illustrated by cartograms. The last part proves by the means of mathematical statistics that the effect of geographical factors on the economic level has diminished during the examined period, whereas the effect of demographical and production factors has not changed significantly.

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