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Browsing by Subject "water"

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  • Ecosystem services in UPM’s intensively managed plantation landscapes in Uruguay 
    Luoma, Antti (2018)
    Plantation forestry has increased dramatically in Uruguay during the past 25 years. Thus, planted forests have an increasing importance in providing other ecosystem services in addition to wood provision in landscape scale. Forest sector company UPM owns more than 250 000 hectares of Eucalyptus plantations in Uruguay. UPM seeks to enhance their systems to measure and monitor ecosystem services, to better understand sustainable provision of ecosystem services in their plantation landscapes, and to mitigate negative and maximize positive impacts. Benefits of monitoring and incorporating ecosystem services at management level include strengthened decision-making and communication, license to operate in long-term and better corporate image. Four ecosystem services were selected for analysis based on their relevance in UPM’s corporate strategy: wood provision, climate regulation, water provision and biodiversity maintenance. Provision of the ecosystem services were estimated quantitatively and compared to a pasture land baseline. Provision of ecosystem services was also linked to product level, tonne of pulp, when applicable. Data for the analysis was partly provided by UPM and partly by literature meta-analysis. Climate benefit of converting pasture to Eucalyptus is 8–31 MgC/ha or 29–115 MgCO2/ha depending on species and rotation number. Planting 40% of a micro water-shed with Eucalyptus reduces water streamflow approximately by 20–27%, while reducing streamflow of peak rainfall months by up to 40%, potentially alleviating floods. Pastures in UPM’s landscapes are well connected, but provided little core habitats. Native riparian forests are fragmented and maintain biodiversity poorly. Suggestions for future monitoring and measuring are presented. This thesis works as a waypoint for future studies of holistic ecosystem services provision in UPM assets.
  • Stable isotope analysis and cryogenic vacuum water extraction : differentiating domestic and foreign strawberries 
    Rapo, Aleksi (2021)
    The geographical origin of food can be determined by analyzing stable isotope ratios of hydrogen and oxygen from water samples that have been extracted from food matrices. A geographical gradient is formed from isotope ratios of water constituents, due to the small mass differences of the different isotopes, which can be also seen in the growing plants in certain regions. Finnish Food Authority has established a method for differentiating domestic and foreign strawberry samples, which uses a database that was created for Finnish strawberries. To produce a representative water sample from food, almost all of the water needs to be extracted from the matrix. The aim of this master’s thesis was to establish and optimize the extraction process of water from strawberry samples with a cryogenic vacuum extraction (CVE). The secondary objective was to test if isotopic values of Finnish strawberries differ from that of foreign strawberry samples and thus be used for determining the domesticity of strawberries. The performance of the cryogenic vacuum extraction procedure was confirmed with three validation tests which tested extraction effect on the sample’s isotope ratios of hydrogen and oxygen, cross-contamination between extraction units and suitable sample fixing materials. The optimization did not reach acceptable accuracy as there were no significant differences between the experimental runs for the Box-Behnken design (BBD). The reason showing ineffective modelling of the design remains unknown, especially as the response surface diagram shows clearly the optimal and minimal trends of the tested factors for δ2H. However, this was not so evident for δ18O. The ranges of tested factors may partly explain this discrepancy. Nonetheless, the differentiation of foreign and domestic strawberry samples was successful with principal component analyses. However, several factors concerning cryogenic vacuum extraction and water extraction in general, such as recovery of water, sample pretreatment, sample storage, different sample matrices and coextracted compounds as well as extraction parameters, need to be addressed in future studies.

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