Knowledge about processes beneath ice sheets, and in particular the processes connected to subglacial hydrology, is crucial for an understanding of ice sheets and how they react in a warming climate. ...Recently, v-shaped subglacial landforms (murtoos) have been found in those parts of the former Fennoscandian Ice Sheet where rapid ice-margin retreat occurred. Based on their geomorphology and distribution, murtoos have been suggested to form where the bed experienced high influxes of meltwater. Here, we investigate the sedimentology and internal structure of murtoos at four localities in southern Sweden to better understand murtoo genesis. The excavated murtoos consist of heterogenous diamict showing reasonably strong fabrics interbedded with sorted sediments. Sediments show signs of ductile deformation and lquefaction. We interpret these landforms as subglacial landforms created by till deposition and sedimentation from meltwater with subsequent deformation. Cross-cutting relationships and inter-bedding of sorted sediments suggest a stepwise formation including periodic deformation events. We propose a model that is based on a dynamic subglacial meltwater system. We suggest that the subglacial environment is within the distributed system where the bed receives meltwater from repeated influxes of supraglacially derived meltwater. The processes suggested in this model of formation are strikingly similar to the character of glaciological and hydrological dynamics observed on the Greenland ice sheet today.
Reforming the welfare state Freeman, Richard B; Swedenborg, Birgitta; Topel, Robert H
2010., 2010, 20100101
eBook
Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous ...social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to emulate. Of late, Sweden has also been much discussed as a model of how to deal with financial and economic crisis, due to the country's recovery from a banking crisis in the mid-1990s. At that time economists heatedly debated whether the welfare state caused Sweden's crisis and should be reformed—a debate with clear parallels to current concerns over capitalism. Bringing together leading economists, Reforming the Welfare State examines Sweden's policies in response to the mid-1990s crisis and the implications for the subsequent recovery. Among the issues investigated are the way changes in the labor market, tax and benefit policies, local government policy, industrial structure, and international trade affected Sweden's recovery. The way that Sweden addressed its economic challenges provides valuable insight into the viability of large welfare states, and more broadly, into the way modern economies deal with crisis.
In A Punishment for Each Criminal Christine Ekholst provides the first in-depth analysis of how gender influenced Swedish medieval legislation. The book explores the important legislative changes ...that took place when women were made personally responsible for their own crimes.
Dendroclimatological sampling of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) has been made in the province of Jämtland, in the west-central Scandinavian mountains, since the 1970s. The tree-ring width (TRW) ...chronology spans several thousand years and has been used to reconstruct June-August temperatures back to 1632 bc. A maximum latewood density (MXD) dataset, covering the period ad 1107-1827 (with gap 1292-1315) was presented in the 1980s by Fritz Schweingruber. Here we combine these historical MXD data with recently collected MXD data covering ad 1292-2006 into a single reconstruction of April-September temperatures for the period ad 1107-2006. Regional curve standardization (RCS) provides more low-frequency variability than “non-RCS” and stronger correlation with local seasonal temperatures (51% variance explained). The MXD chronology shows a stronger relationship with temperatures than the TRW data, but the two chronologies show similar multi-decadal variations back to ad 1500. According to the MXD chronology, the period since ad 1930 and around ad 1150-1200 were the warmest during the last 900 years. Due to large uncertainties in the early part of the combined MXD chronology, it is not possible to conclude which period was the warmest. More sampling of trees growing near the tree-line is needed to further improve the MXD chronology.
The Palaeoproterozoic (1.90-1.60 Ga) crust of central Fennoscandia was intruded repeatedly by dolerite dikes and sills during the Neo- and Mesoproterozoic eons. We report 17 new baddeleyite U-Pb ...dates comprising six generations of dolerites (in Ma): Blekinge-Dalarna dolerites 946-978; Protogine Zone dolerites 1,211-1,221; Central Scandinavian Dolerite Group 1,264-1,271; Tuna dikes and age equivalents in Dalarna 1,461-1,462; Varmland dolerites approximately 1,568; Breven-Hallefors dolerites approximately 1,595. The favoured tectonic model implies that the majority of these suites were related to active margin processes somewhere west (and possibly south) of the Fennoscandian Shield. Dolerite intrusions are interpreted to reflect discrete events of back-arc extension as the arc retreated oceanward. Initial Hf and Nd isotope compositions of the dolerite swarms fall between CHUR and normal-depleted mantle, and suggest a variably depleted and re-enriched mantle as the source for the here investigated 1.6 to 0.95 Ga old mafic rocks. Repeated recycling of older crustal components, mainly sediments (dominated by material with short residence ages) in earlier subduction systems may have been very efficient at producing geochemically and isotopically variably enriched lithospheric mantle sections beneath the Fennoscandian Shield. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
The Palaeoproterozoic (2.0–1.8 Ga) Svecokarelian orogen in central Sweden consists of a low-pressure, predominantly medium-grade metamorphic domain (central part of Bergslagen lithotectonic unit), ...enclosed to the north and south by low-pressure migmatite belts. Two periods of metamorphism (1.87–1.85 and 1.83–1.79 Ga) are known in the migmatite belts. In this study, new U–Th–Pb ion microprobe data on zircon and monazite from twelve samples of locally migmatized gneisses and felsic intrusive bodies determine both protolith and metamorphic ages in four sample areas north of Stockholm, inside or immediately adjacent to the medium-grade metamorphic domain. Two orthogneiss samples from the Rimbo area yield unusually old protolith ages of 1909 ± 4 and 1908 ± 4 Ma, while three orthogneisses from the Skutskär and Forsmark areas yield more typical protolith ages between 1901 ± 3 and 1888 ± 3 Ma. Migmatized paragneiss samples from this and two earlier studies contain a significant detrital component sourced from this 1.9 Ga magmatic suite. They are interpreted to be deposited contemporaneously with or shortly after this magmatism. Migmatization of the paragneiss at Rimbo was followed by intrusion of leucogranite at 1846 ± 3 Ma. Even in the other sample areas to the north (Hedesunda-Tierp, Skutskär and Forsmark), metamorphism including migmatization is constrained to the 1.87–1.85 Ga interval and penetrative ductile deformation is limited by earlier studies in the Forsmark area to 1.87–1.86 Ga. However, apart from a metamorphic monazite age of 1863 ± 1 Ma, precise ages were not possible to obtain due to the presence of only partially reset recrystallized domains in zircon, or highly discordant U-rich metamict and altered metamorphic rims. Migmatization was contemporaneous with magmatic activity at 1.87–1.84 Ga in the Bergslagen lithotectonic unit involving a mantle-derived component, and there is a spatial connection between migmatization and this magmatic phase in the Hedesunda-Tierp sample area. The close spatial and temporal interplay between ductile deformation, magmatism and migmatization, the
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metamorphic conditions, and the continuation of similar magmatic activity around and after 1.8 Ga support solely accretionary rather than combined accretionary and collisional orogenic processes as an explanation for the metamorphism. The generally lower metamorphic grade and restricted influence of the younger metamorphic episode, at least at the ground surface level, distinguishes the central part of the Bergslagen lithotectonic unit from the migmatite belts further north and south.
Providing a unique insight into early modern notions of body and self, this book offers a comprehensive interpretation of Swedish witchcraft in the eighteenth century and its endurance as every day ...social practice in the age of Enlightenment.
This book provides a rich analysis of the history of Swedish victim support. With the majority of research on victim support centering on the Anglosphere, this book offers a unique case study for ...considering the role of the victim in the criminal justice system. While Sweden has enacted many laws to support victims, and victim assistance programs have grown rapidly, welfare policy has become more restrictive and crime policy, to some degree, more punitive. Drawing on archival material and interviews with key representatives for the Swedish Association for Victim Support (BOJ), this book examines what role the victim movement has played in a changing welfare state. It argues that BOJ filled a function in the decentralization and privatization of the Swedish welfare state and explores distinctive features of the Swedish victim movement and the form it has taken, as compared to that in other countries. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of criminology, sociology, social policy, civil society studies, and social work, and those engaged in studies of victims and victimology.
This paper presents and evaluates a method for encouraging long-term thinking and for considering a variety of scenarios in environmental policy processes. The Swedish environmental policy is based ...on 16 environmental quality objectives (EQOs) that national authorities are obliged to observe. These objectives are reviewed annually and evaluated in depth every four years. Here we describe and explore a futures study project for introducing more long-term thinking into work on the EQOs, which we tested in the in-depth evaluation in 2008. We found it difficult to design a collective scenario for a case with a wide variety of objectives and individuals with different backgrounds. However, this difficulty makes it even more important to incorporate futures studies into the work of the relevant authorities. Scenario work is often subcontracted, leading to a constant lack of futures studies expertise and thinking within authorities. Despite the difficulties, we found that experts within the authorities did begin to recognise the opportunities provided by futures studies. The project revealed an interest and need for futures studies within the authorities in charge of Swedish environmental quality objectives and our findings show that the authorities need to build up their own skills in futures studies.
The connectivity of macropore networks is thought to exert an important control on preferential flow in soil, although little progress has been made towards incorporating an understanding of these ...effects into management-oriented flow and transport models. In principle, concepts from percolation theory should be well suited to quantify the connectivity of preferred flow pathways, but so far its relevance for natural soils in the field has not been tested. To investigate this question, X-ray tomography was used to measure soil pore space architecture at an image resolution of 65μm for 64 samples taken in two consecutive years in the harrowed and ploughed layers of a silt loam soil a few weeks after spring cultivation. The results showed that the pore networks displayed key features predicted by classical percolation theory: a strong relationship was found between the percolating fraction and the imaged porosity, with a percolation threshold of ca. 0.04 to 0.06m3m−3 in the harrowed layer. A percolation threshold was less clearly identifiable in topsoil that had not been recently tilled, although this may probably be attributed to finite size sampling effects in this layer, which showed a more heterogeneous and structured distribution of the pore space. Although further work on more strongly structured soil horizons, especially subsoils, would be desirable, it is tentatively suggested that percolation concepts could prove useful to estimate the conducting macroporosity in management models of preferential flow and transport.
•Percolation concepts describe the connectivity of X-ray imaged macropore networks.•A percolation threshold of 4-6% was found for imaged porosity in harrowed soil.•The homogenizing effect of harrowing on the structural pore space was quantified.•Effects of the finite sample size were noted in the more structured ploughed layer.
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