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- Freitas, Flavio L. M., 1986-
(författare)
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Brazilian land use policies and the development of ecosystem services
- 2017
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Concerns related to global environmental changes due to land use changes have been driving international communities towards more sustainable land use systems. Brazil is a country of global strategic importance in this matter considering that it is the nation with the largest extension of preserved tropical native vegetation, recognised for its ecosystem services and high and unique biodiversity. Expansion of forestry and agriculture is taking place rapidly in Brazil, partly over degraded pastureland, but also over native vegetation. Regulating policies to govern and limit this expansion is crucial to ensure the preservation of the ecosystems services provided by native vegetation. This thesis aims at improving the understanding of the potential impacts of prevailing public and private policies in the conservation of nature in Brazil. For this end, the Land Use Policy Assessment (LUPA) model was employed to evaluate potential pathways of implementation of the land use policies. Paper 1 evaluated the effects of current private and public command and control regulations in the protection of above-ground carbon stocks, identifying the most relevant stakeholders holding carbon stocks. The findings suggest that about 10% of carbon stocks are unprotected, where other policy instruments based on the market will be mostly required. Paper 2 performed an assessment of the mechanism for offsetting the legal deficit of native vegetation among landholders, evaluating the different offsetting implementation practices and their impacts on nature protection and socio-economic development. The results indicate that the offsetting mechanism may have little or no additional effects on protection of native vegetation and its ecosystem services because most of the offsetting is likely to take place where native vegetation is already protected by current legislations. However, it is viable to maximise environmental and socio-economic returns from the offsetting mechanism.
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| 2. |
- Wärnheim, Alexander
(författare)
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Holistic evaluation and testing of coil coatings
- 2023
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Coil coatings are durable organic coatings used to protect metal sheets from corrosion and improve their aesthetic properties. Because of their extensive use, coil coatings have long been of interest for industrial and academic researchers. This interest has recently been furthered by a societal push towards the replacement of fossil-based raw materials with alternatives that are biobased and renewable.The aim of this licentiate thesis is to demonstrate how analyses on the macro-, micro-, and nanoscale can be used to better understand the degradation process of polyester-based coil coatings. The included manuscripts showcase methods for evaluating and comparing different coil coating formulations and for verifying accelerated weathering techniques.Multiple techniques, focusing on infrared (IR) spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM), were used to analyze coating systems before and after different types of weathering. IR data acquired from techniques without spatial resolution, such as attenuated total reflection (ATR) and photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) have been expanded upon with spatially resolved focal plane array (FPA) and s-SNOM (scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy) measurements. Spatially resolved chemical data of coating cross sections were acquired and used to assess how the degradation at the surface and in the bulk was related. Additionally, differences between the degradation behavior of a standard fossil-based coating and a similar coating with biobased components as well as differences between the degradation caused by artificial and natural weathering was discussed.Nanoscale mechanical measurements of simplified coating surfaces showed that weathering increased nanomechanical stiffness and led to homogenization of mechanical properties on the local level. In addition, measurements with nanoscale FTIR correlated with macroscale FTIR. Even relatively minor changes in band intensities could be tracked on a local scale. Although the simplified samples were chemically homogeneous, nanoscale FTIR shows great promise for the assessment of local degradation of full systems.
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