Suchergebnisse

This thesis presents and asseses a method for participation in landscape planning and management. The method has a long-term perspective, while focusing on the interests of local stakeholders. Public participation has been recognized as a fundamental part of landscape planning and management. Through for example the European Landscape Convention's (ELC) inclusive definition of "landscape", landscape got a more democratic connotation where focus is put on people's perception of a landscape. This shift calls for more collaborative working methods requiring more and somewhat different skills from the professional planner than a traditional top-down system does. The research presented in this thesis is context-bound, and based on action-oriented working methods and approaches where citizens, planners and managers are involved in parallel. Academia, represented by researchers and students, is proposed to supplement and assist municipal authorities and the local society in collaborative planning. Methods and approaches related to awareness raising, embodied knowledge, strengthening people's relationship to their everyday landscape and identifying ways of letting local experts' voices be heard in the municipal planning process, have guided the research. All the cases presented, describe planning processes in peri-urban landscapes, at different scales with strong connection to nature reserves, changed patterns of land use, and with varying amounts of stakeholders directly related to the landscapes in question. Three cases were selected to discover, design and investigate potentials with the "connoisseur methods", and three cases were selected to test and refine the method, anchored in current municipal planning and resulting in actual plans. In this thesis 'The connoisseur method' is proposed as a way to achieve better collaborative planning. It invites a new type of expert to influence landscape development: the connoisseur is an expert in experiencing the landscape from her particular perspective, and represents the local society. The method proposed is a mix of different participatory methods used for landscape analysis as a way for the professional planner/manager to understand how the local community understands and uses different landscape features. The results of the different cases show how the process is of vital importance. A successful collaboration process is a valuable tool for learning, both locally among the connoisseurs and amongst the municipal planners and managers.

This report presents the outcome of the joint work of PhD students and senior researchers working with DNA-based biodiversity assessment approaches with the goal to facilitate others the access to definitions and explanations about novel DNA-based methods. The work was performed during a PhD course (SLU PNS0169) at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Uppsala, Sweden. The course was co-organized by the EU COST research network DNAqua-Net and the SLU Research Schools Focus on Soils and Water (FoSW) and Ecology - basics and applications. DNAqua-Net (COST Action CA15219, 2016-2020) is a network connecting researchers, water managers, politicians and other stakeholders with the aim to develop new genetic tools for bioassessment of aquatic ecosystems in Europe and beyond. The PhD course offered a comprehensive overview of the paradigm shift from traditional morphology-based species identification to novel identification approaches based on molecular markers. We covered the use of molecular tools in both basic research and applied use with a focus on aquatic ecosystem assessment, from species collection to the use of diversity in environmental legislation. The focus of the course was on DNA (meta)barcoding and aquatic organisms. The knowledge gained was shared with the general public by creating Wikipedia pages and through this collaborative Open Access publication, co-authored by all course participants.

Sweden strives for adaptive wildlife management. With the introduction of new technologies and methodologies, adaptive management must be resilient and efficient in implementing and trying these, to truly stay adaptive. One of the most widely used technologies within Swedish wildlife management is camera traps, as they are a relatively cheap and unintrusive means of monitoring wildlife. In this report, I focus on the practical and theoretical development and implementation of camera traps. By conducting qualitative, key informant interviews with Swedish wildlife managers, I provide insight into managers' thoughts on and experiences with implementation of camera traps specifically and new technologies and methodologies more generally, and into their views on the challenges that Swedish wildlife management may face today, and in the future. The analysis revealed concerns in communication of information, knowledge, experiences, and technology uses between involved stakeholders, as well as issues in the coordination of methodological and technological development and implementation. Efficient communication and coordination are vital in maintaining a functional approach to adaptive wildlife management with fundamental knowledge amongst all stakeholders. The adaptive management framework and practical implementation needs careful work to obtain these functions. The analysis also revealed frustration amongst wildlife managers concerning the legislation around the use of new technologies. As adaptive management is reliant on a trial-and-error approach, legislation must be adapted to allow for new tools and methods to be tried in order to meet current and future management demands.

The first decade of the 21st century has brought with it two important breakthroughs in the study of comparative politics. The first one concerns the availability of data. Nowadays, access to a wide range of information sources for a large number of countries in the world can be gained without too much effort. The second one concerns the methodological achievements made in recent years. Today, sophisticated multi-level analyses can be conducted fairly easily. Among qualitatively oriented researchers, Charles Ragin has made a significant contribution by introducing the fs/QCA-technique into the field of political science. However, the growing amount of data & the new methods not only open up new possibilities for the researcher. The present article explicitly deals with the problems related to the use of multi-level analyses & fs/QCA in comparative political research. In addition, attention is drawn to the drawbacks of using survey data from heterogeneous settings. Adapted from the source document.