Swedish Land Research Articles

Citizen Observations as Legal Obligations: (Dis)Associations and Representation at the Swedish Land and Environment Court of Appeal

Citizen Observations as Legal Obligations: (Dis)Associations and Representation at the Swedish Land and Environment Court of Appeal

Ortnamnspolitiken i svenska Pommern: En diskursanalytisk och kontaktonomastisk studie

The article presents the results of a pilot investigation into the seventeenth-century name policies associated with large-scale cadastral mapping of the Swedish conglomerate state and their implementation in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The material studied consists of the Land Survey’s directives issued by the Swedish Crown between 1628 and 1700, as well as 759 place name attestations excerpted from the B I volume of cadastral maps of the Wolgast District from 1694. The article reveals how both practical and symbolic aspects of political discourses are evident in the regulations of place name collection and processing. Particular attention is paid to the Swedification discourse analysed by the tools native to Foucaultian discourse analysis and proximisation theory. The Wolgast material shows that the Swedish land surveyors did not comply with the instructions to Swedify or translate Pomeranian names. The tentative explanation offered builds on the idea of linguistic and cultural proximity between the German-speaking region and the Swedish land surveyors.

Long-term trends in functional crop diversity across Swedish farms

The diversity of cultivated crops is relevant on various spatial scales, from the field and farm to the landscape. We apply a decomposition of the Shannon diversity index that allows the differentiation of functional diversity of production. The decomposition separates diversity of functional crop groups from related diversity, which shows the species diversity within the crop groups. Using population-based field and farm-level data from Sweden 2001–2018, we are able to study the development of overall (Shannon), functional and related crop diversity among a total of 83770 farms. Crop diversity indices are calculated by farm and year based on the Swedish Land Parcel Identification system (LPIS). We find that functional crop diversity has declined among Swedish farms over the period. Related crop diversity has declined but regained in recent years. Accounting for farm size and pedoclimatic conditions, organic farms have a higher functional diversity, and the uptake of organic practices leads to an increase in functional crop diversity over the period.

Probabilistic cost-benefit analysis for mitigating hydrogeological risks in underground construction

Leakage of groundwater into underground facilities can subsequently cause groundwater drawdown, subsidence and subsidence damages to the built-up environment. In order to reduce the risk of damage, measures to mitigate the risks must often be implemented. The aim of this paper is to describe and demonstrate a probabilistic cost-benefit analysis approach to assess the economic profitability of investing in different risk mitigation alternatives. Since underground construction is always associated with uncertainties, the analysis uses probability distribution functions for uncertain parameters and Monte Carlo simulations to quantify probabilities of damage and implementation costs. The proposed approach is exemplified with a case study, the road tunnel project Bypass (Förbifart) Stockholm in eastern Sweden, for which four risk mitigation alternatives were evaluated. In conclusion, the approach helps to highlight the economic effects of different risk mitigation approaches and constitute a transparent support for decisions on implementation of risk mitigation. For the case study, the analysis indicates that the implementation costs of ∼ 7000 MSEK (700 million EUR) for risk mitigation needed to fulfil the legal requirements, from the Swedish Land- and Environmental court, in the form of ambitious sealing strategies are disproportionate relative to the benefits of ∼ 50 MSEK (5 million EUR) gained in the form of reduced damage risk for the built-up environment. In other words, billions SEK of taxpayers' money are spent on unnecessary expenses to fulfill legal requirements without societal benefits. The novelty of the paper constitutes the coupling of models and combination of established methods for management of hydrogeological risks.

Land Acquisition Regulation through the lens of expert stakeholders’ mental models - what are the implications for business development among Swedish farmers?

Agricultural and forestry land markets are regulated in several European countries. However, assessing the economic consequences of land market regulation for agricultural and forestry firms is methodologically challenging for various reasons. The aim of this study is to highlight the usefulness of exploring expert stakeholders’ mental models in order to gain insights into the economic impacts of agricultural and forestry land market regulation. We use thematic analysis based on in-depth interview data to explore Swedish expert stakeholders’ mental models concerning the regulation of the Swedish agricultural and forestry land market. This research strategy facilitated a rich understanding of the effects of land regulation on economic consequences. Findings indicate that current regulation does not have any major impact on the economic situation of agricultural and forestry firms in Sweden. This is interesting from the perspective of agricultural and forestry land market policy.

From single fields to river basins: Identification of critical source areas for erosion and phosphorus losses at high resolution

Concentrations of phosphorus (P), the main limiting nutrient in freshwater ecosystems, need to be reduced, but this is difficult due to high spatial and temporal variations and limited resources. Reliable targeting of critical source areas, such as erosion-prone fields and parts of fields, is necessary to improve the cost efficiency of mitigation measures. We used high-resolution (2 m × 2 m) distributed modelling to calculate erosion risk for a large area (202 279 km2) covering > 90% of Swedish arable land. Comparison of model results with independent farmers’ observations in a pilot catchment showed high spatial agreement. The modelled worst case scenario produced reasonable quantitative results comparable to measured 90th percentile values of suspended sediment (SS) loads at both field and small catchment scale (R2 = 0.81, p < 0.001). Overall, loads of SS, especially during extreme episodes, strongly governed losses of unreactive P and total P at both field and catchment scale.

Estimating the impact of agri-environmental payments on nutrient runoff using a unique combination of data

This study is the first to estimate the effect of Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) on nutrient runoff using abatement data and water samples on a large scale. This unique combination of data sources identifies all farms located upstream from a given water sampling site. By using watersheds that cover 91% of the Swedish land area and AES payments to 83% of Swedish farms, the study is almost a full population evaluation. A watershed fixed-effect model estimates whether within-watershed variation in AES payments affects nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in water samples. For the period 1997–2013, the study finds that higher uptake of the AES Wetland, Catch crop/No autumn tillage, Environmental protection measures and Culturally significant landscape elements was associated with reduced nutrient runoff. However, uptake of Grassed buffer zones, Pastures and meadows and Organic production was associated with increased nutrient runoff.

The Swedish Legal System and Possible Implications of the Belgian Rulings - Reformatory Procedure in Swedish Land and Environment Courts

The paper intends to give a short overview of how the Swedish system of land and environment courts is organised and of the procedure in their administrative cases, with specific attention paid to cases on appealed decisions from authorities. In these cases, the land and environment courts act as traditional Swedish administrative courts and follow a tradition whereby the court, in principle, has the same powers to solve the case as the first deciding authority. Acting in administrative cases the courts have an active role and a flexible remedial toolbox, which may be used when solving environmental disputes: the ex officio principle and the reformatory procedure. This system obliges the court to thoroughly examine the case at hand by its own initiative and also enables the judge to not only fully review an administrative decision, but also change its content. In other cases, the land and environment courts play the role of a civil court (e.g. disputes on compensation for environmental damage and expropriation) or partly as an authority (application for permit to larger industries or water operations). One conclusion regarding administrative cases is that an “administrative loop” i.e. a procedure whereby a court, in a still open case, refers an issue back to the administrative authority which issued the challenged decision, in order to amend a procedural error, is not possible in Sweden. Due to the wide powers, as described above, of the Swedish courts to annul or amend an administrative decision, such a possibility would on the other hand not serve any substantial purpose and not enhance the efficiency of judicial or administrative procedures.

Land Developers and Archaeological Information

AbstractLand developers are significant stakeholders of archaeological work in the developed world. A better understanding of their information practices is crucial for the preservation and management of archaeological heritage. This study investigates land developers’ use, needs and conceptions of the usefulness- value of archaeological information and their views of development-led archaeological process. The findings are based on a survey of Finnish and Swedish land developers (N=34) that have contracted and financed archaeological fieldwork. The results show that the most useful information for land developers is data on the spatial location of archaeological sites but that the situation is much more nuanced than often suggested. Even if the most of the respondents were rather satisfied with the current situation, the lack of information can have major consequences and there are several obstacles to obtain relevant information. Extensive reliance on people sources can be seen both a symptom of the current problems and an indication of the importance of closer collaboration between archaeologists and land developers. Further, the study shows that the different levels of the perceived usefulness of specific types of archaeological information can be explained by the different regimes determining their worth in the two communities.

Merger in land data handling, blending of cultures

Land administration concerns the handling of spatial and legal data on land. In many countries this is executed by two separate agencies, cadastres and land registries. Despite international literature claiming that merging such agencies is more effective for the data handling, in practice staff within land agencies tend to struggle with such mergers. This article reviews the case of the Swedish land administration merger to study this phenomenon. The review uses cultural theory to understand individual perspectives on mergers, and uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis to uncover co-existing values before and after the merger. Surprisingly the post-merger agency exhibits a stronger preference for hierarchical rules and peer control in data handling than the pre-merger agency, even though staff relations have remained relatively flat. Hence, values of staff members may change in different ways than what one would require for a change toward integrated data handling.

Municipal land allocations: integrating planning and selection of developers while transferring public land for housing in Sweden

An essential component in all housing developments is suitable land. Besides being buildable, this implies land approved for housing in a marketable and consequently implementable location. Insufficient supply of suitable land to housing developers could affect the supply of housing. In Sweden, a lot of land appropriate for housing is owned—often since many years back—by municipalities and supplied to developers through the use of ‘land allocations’. A land allocation connects a developer and a municipality in a interdependency-based collaboration intended to jointly create an implementable development right, followed by a land transfer. Using semi-structured interviews and questionnaires reaching a total of 26 municipalities and 91 developers, the Swedish land allocation system is investigated; results are presented with emphasis on requirements put on developers, its interaction with the planning process and on the different methods used to select a certain developer. Additionally, the system is reviewed from a developer perspective and put in an international context. While many countries make use of public land for housing, the article shows that the Swedish land allocation system deviates in several aspects and in spite of its long history, there are undoubtedly features considered less well functioning from the developer’s point of view.

Water chemistry in 179 randomly selected Swedish headwater streams related to forest production, clear-felling and climate.

From a policy perspective, it is important to understand forestry effects on surface waters from a landscape perspective. The EU Water Framework Directive demands remedial actions if not achieving good ecological status. In Sweden, 44 % of the surface water bodies have moderate ecological status or worse. Many of these drain catchments with a mosaic of managed forests. It is important for the forestry sector and water authorities to be able to identify where, in the forested landscape, special precautions are necessary. The aim of this study was to quantify the relations between forestry parameters and headwater stream concentrations of nutrients, organic matter and acid-base chemistry. The results are put into the context of regional climate, sulphur and nitrogen deposition, as well as marine influences. Water chemistry was measured in 179 randomly selected headwater streams from two regions in southwest and central Sweden, corresponding to 10 % of the Swedish land area. Forest status was determined from satellite images and Swedish National Forest Inventory data using the probabilistic classifier method, which was used to model stream water chemistry with Bayesian model averaging. The results indicate that concentrations of e.g. nitrogen, phosphorus and organic matter are related to factors associated with forest production but that it is not forestry per se that causes the excess losses. Instead, factors simultaneously affecting forest production and stream water chemistry, such as climate, extensive soil pools and nitrogen deposition, are the most likely candidates The relationships with clear-felled and wetland areas are likely to be direct effects.

Geospatial metadata extraction from product description document applying methods from ontology engineering

Metadata creation is a bottleneck in European Union (EU) INSPIRE Directive. Firstly the paper presents results from a conformance test conducted at Swedish Land Survey. The results of the testing show a gap between the current statuses of metadata and INSPIRE demands. Secondly the paper introduces an ontology-engineering approach to support extraction of metadata from annotated text documents. This approach can be used for generating metadata in Ontology Web Language (OWL) format that can be reused in a Geography Markup Language (GML) documents instance. Catalogue service of the Swedish geoportal to INSPIRE can employ this approach to generate dataset-level metadata.

Classification of Two Swedish Forest Streams in Accordance with the European Union Water Framework Directive

The European Union (EU) member states have agreed on the Water Framework Directive. The vision is that all European waters will achieve "good" ecological status. Each member state has agreed to meet these commitments. In Sweden, the Environmental Protection Agency regulates the methods used for classification of the ecological status of inland and coastal waters. The aim of this study was to evaluate how these criteria (using diatoms, benthic fauna, fish, water chemistry, hydromorphology) principally affect the classification of two typical forest streams. Forestland constitutes approximately 70% of the Swedish land area and forestry is the dominating human impact on many waters. Particular attention was paid to evaluate how the classification may vary with catchment size and between years. The results indicate that there is an obvious risk that many Swedish forest streams will not achieve "good" ecological status. The classification outcome may vary between years and regarding fish status; it also seems to depend on stream size.

Wetland classification for Swedish CORINE Land Cover adopting a semi-automatic interactive approach

In a collaboration between the Swedish Space Corporation and the National Land Survey of Sweden, work has been carried out to develop a satellite-data-based method for mapping wetlands for the Swedish CORINE Land Cover database. The aim was two-fold: (1) develop a method for mapping the wetlands in five classes, namely "inland marshes", "wet mires", "other mires", "exploited peatlands", and "salt marshes", with a minimum mapping unit of 1 ha; and (2) investigate if the classes "wet mires" and "other mires" could be obtained more reliably from satellite data than directly from 1 : 50 000 scale topographic maps. Data sources used in the project included geo-referenced Landsat thematic mapper (TM) images, digital topographic map data, digital vegetation data, and colour infrared aerial photographs. The development work included analysis of spectral signature characteristics, classification tests, method definition, method verification, pilot production, and accuracy assessment. The method developed to obtain the five wetland classes is a combination method. The classes inland marshes, salt marshes, and exploited peatlands are mapped using geographical information system (GIS) operations, combining information from the topographic maps, and visual interpretation of Landsat TM data. For the classes wet mires and other mires, a stepwise semi-automatic approach was adopted, where level slicing in ratios or in single Landsat TM bands is used to produce the classes. The evaluation showed high accuracy for all five classes, with overall accuracies ranging from 90% to 100%. It was also concluded that the semi-automatic interactive approach used to produce wet mires and other mires gave the same high accuracy as the topographic map, or a better result than the map for areas in northern Sweden where the representation of wet mires on the map is not as good. The method described is used for production of the wetland classes for the Swedish CORINE Land Cover.

Evaluation of Swedish woodland key habitats using red-listed bryophytes and lichens

All Swedish forest land is at present being surveyed with the aim of mapping woodland key habitats which have an estimated number of ca. 70 000. An untested requirement of these habitats is that they should contain red-listed species. In order to investigate if they fulfill their aim, an inventory of nationally red-listed bryophytes and lichens was performed in ca. 120 randomly selected woodland key habitats distributed throughout the country. The species were recorded in line transects, covering the whole surface of the habitats. The mean number of red-listed species per habitat was 0.7 for bryophytes and 1.4 for lichens with 11 species at the richest site and 71% of the sites having at least one species. Nemoral forests and coniferous forests were the most species-rich habitat types. The habitats of northern Sweden were more species rich than the southern ones. There were weak correlations between presence of bryophytes and lichens. The study shows that a majority of the woodland key habitats contain red-listed bryophyte and lichen species. Further studies are needed in order to record more organism groups and to compare the woodland key habitats with the surrounding matrix forests.

Municipal site leasehold in Sweden: A land policy instrument in Decay

Abstract Municipal site leasehold in Sweden is in need of renovation. Municipalities are troubled with securing returns on investments and increments in land values, leaseholders by unpredictability and sharply increased fees, and both are troubled by growing numbers of costly court cases. As a result, the use of site leasehold has come to a near standstill. Recent developments in the use of site leasehold in Sweden are charted, problems are highlighted, and possible solutions are discussed by way of comparison with other countries. If municipal site leasehold is to play a meaningful role in Swedish land policy, it must be reformed.

The accuracy of pulse oximetry at two haematocrit levels.

The object of this study was to investigate the influence of haematocrit on the accuracy of pulse oximetry. Seven Swedish land race rabbits were studied. The oxygen saturation of haemoglobin was decreased step-wise using increasing fractions of nitrogen to the inspiratory gas. One pulse oximeter probe was attached on the front leg and another probe directly over the common carotid artery. The pulse oximeter readings (SpO2) were compared with simultaneous oxygen saturation analysis (SaO2) by a haemoximeter. The pulse oximeter measurements were performed at the haematocrit levels of approximately 40% and 11%, respectively. We found a good correlation between SpO2 and SaO2 in a wide range of the oxygen saturation, i.e. SaO2 26-100%. After haemodilution the correlation was improved in the range 86-100%, but not in the range 26-85%. No correlation between SpO2 and SaO2 was found when the sensor was attached directly over the artery during normal haematocrit levels. After haemodilution a better correlation was however obtained. These results indicate that the accuracy of pulse oximetry is dependent on the haematocrit level.

Factors affecting the price of Swedish forest land, 1965?1987

A model for the determination of the price of forest land is estimated for Sweden from 1965–1987, when (except for a few years) private non-industrial forest owners could finance their holdings at a negative real after-tax borrowing rate. It is assumed that credit has been limited by the value of mortgage security, assessed independently of the price settlement. The estimated coefficients of the regression equation are used for a calculation of the average real rate of discount of forest owners and the average value of amenities. The model also evaluates the effect of the temporary land price regulation from 1979–1987.

Causes and Consequences of Eighteenth Century Swedish Land Reform

Causes and Consequences of Eighteenth Century Swedish Land Reform