Browsing by Title

Taita Hills are situated in southeastern Kenya (03°20'S 38°15'E), only 350 km from the equator. Ecology and biodiversity of the area is one of a kind and has been subject to multiple studies of natural sciences during the last decades. Taita Hills belong to the Eastern Arc Mountains, an ancient chain of mountains in Eastern Africa and one of the 25 biodiversity hotspots of the world. To qualify as a biodiversity hotspot an area must have lost significant amounts of its original vegetation and inhabit a number of endemic plant species. Both of these criteria are met in Taita Hills where the favorable climate enables endemic species to thrive. Large areas of forest has been cut down in order get more room for agriculture, the main source of livelihood in Kenyan countryside, making the environment threatened. The diverse environment of Taita Hills produces a multitude of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services can be defined as all benefits people obtain from nature. They are often divided into four categories: provisioning services, regulating services, cultural services and supporting services. Ecosystem services link ecological knowledge and economics together by enabling monetary valuation of abstract aspects of nature (e. g. water retention). This link helps decision makers to take environmental issues into consideration by providing a possibility to compare concrete and abstract aspects of nature with each other through tangible monetary values. Research on ecosystem services has grown exponentially in the recent years and decades. However, most of this research has been conducted in developed countries and only little research has been completed in developing countries such as Kenya. It has been established that provisioning services are considered the most important services in developing countries, though. This was the case in Taita Hills, too; the majority of ecosystem services recognized by the local people were provisioning services. Services like firewood, medicinal usage of local plants and scenery were familiar to local people and the role of water was also emphasized in their perceptions of ecosystem services and biodiversity as a whole. Phoenix reclinata was one of the keystone species of ecosystem services. People's perceptions of biodiversity can vary a lot. Like ecosystem services, biodiversity is a subjective concept that can be understood differently by different people. Understanding how people see nature that surrounds them and biodiversity it beholds can help e. g. in planning nature conservation areas. When people agree on decisions made about their environment and recognize their own basic values in the decisions made they are more eager to support them. Even so, research on people's perceptions of biodiversity is currently lacking. Results that have been obtained have suggested that plants' role in people's perceptions is emphasized and people respond better to beautiful and imposing species than modest or ugly species. This was true also in Taita Hills where people linked plants and forest directly to biodiversity. They also recognized local plant species well, regardless of their nativeness, and had a close relationship with nature overall.

Due to population growth, urbanization, and increase in life expectancy, the urban population is growing, and by 2050 68% of the global population is expected to live in urban areas. Even though the air quality in urban settings has greatly improved in recent decades due to increased legislation, restriction, and monitoring, the negative health impacts associated with pollutants have not completely diminished. Air quality varies on a local scale due to urban form and function, that creates differences in experienced exposure among individuals. These exposure differences among socio-economic groups have been studied, but no clear consensus has been found, as the results have been very diverse and even contradictory. Therefore, conducting local level studies is important in order to identify local patterns of exposure and to recognize them in urban planning. However, previous literature on the topic in Finnish context is lacking. This thesis studies interpolated air pollutant exposure among one susceptible socio-economic group – the elderly – and aims to identify possible hotspots of both in Helsinki, Finland. The distribution of the elderly and air quality is assessed through Moran’s I calculations. Global Moran’s I is used to assess for spatial autocorrelation, and local Moran’s I is applied to identify local clusters. To further examine the relationship, correlation coefficients are calculated through Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. According to the results, there is a weak positive correlation between the elderly and air quality, indicating that generally air quality tends to be worse when the number of elderly people increase. However, the relationship is stronger among younger age groups, although the differences between age groups is very small. The exposure was also assessed through overlapping high value clusters, which indicate that elderly clusters in the city center are located in areas with low air quality, while elderly clusters in Lauttasaari and Vuosaari are located in areas with good air quality. Previous studies regarding the relationship between age and air pollution exposure have been contradicting in different cities, and therefore these results provide important knowledge about the problem specifically in the context of Helsinki. Additionally, the results are be observed in the light of the larger discourse around socio-economic status and air pollution, but further studies on the topic are still needed. Including multiple socio-economic variables and the dimension of negative health outcomes would aid in identifying 1) the most important socio-economic factors in the context of negative health outcomes associated with air pollution, and 2) those areas where multiple important socio-economic factors and low air quality are overlapping and therefore might have higher risk for negative health outcomes.

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is an important organelle of the cell where a high number of proteins are synthesized and modified to obtain their final structure. Therefore, the ER stress, which is caused by accumulation of unfolded proteins in the ER, is not to be taken lightly since it could contribute to many diseases, such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. The response to the ER stress is the unfolded protein response (UPR), which is an adaptive system that helps in adjusting for increased folding needs within the ER. One of the main protein branches in the UPR is inositol requiring enzyme 1 (IRE1). IRE1 detects the status of protein folding inside the ER and initiates the UPR signaling pathway to achieve either normal folding status or cell death. The aim of this research was to express yeast IRE1 in E.coli and human IRE1 in insect cells, purify with affinity chromatography and study the IRE1’s crystal structure with a small molecule modulator that could possibly enhance its activity. The protein was expressed successfully and purified with glutathione S-transferase (GST) tag, and the activity of the pure protein was determined. The structural studies were not fully completed since the absolute purity and yield that was necessary for crystallization was not achieved due to loss of protein during gel filtration and precipitation. Based on the results it is likely that the structure of the protein could be solved and further biochemical and structural studies with F10 are possible.

In Finland and in many other European countries, indoor housing of dairy cattle has been increasing at the expense of grazing. According to Finnish legislation, only dairy cows housed in tie-stalls are obligated to graze for 60 days per year between May and September. Pressure to intensify production leads to increase in herd sizes, regional concentration, lack of suitable pastureland near large barns, and automation of milking. Conversely, grazing is regarded as important for animal welfare, maintenance of biodiversity and cultural landscapes. Farmer perceptions towards grazing have not been studied in Finland comprehensively, which need to be understood better in order to provide adequate support for sustainable management of grazing. The research aims at gaining understanding of the external and internal factors driv- ing the farm-level decision making related to grazing regimes. Concept of good farming ideal is used to examine farmers’ decision-making. The data was collected from 26 cattle farms with a gradient of grazing from zero to maximum. Firstly, an online questionnaire was sent out to farmers and secondly, semi-structured inter- views were conducted with 7 dairy producers, to further explore farmer views about grazing, biodiversity, and animal welfare. The results show farmers who practice grazing to perceive it more positively than the farmers who do not graze. Some of the farmers who grazed seemed to consider it almost as an intrinsic value, whereas farmers with no grazing saw it as an inef- ficient production method, which they were afraid would become an obligation. The most im- portant internal factors driving decision-making about grazing based on the questionnaire and interviews, were animal welfare, decreased workload because of grazing, infrastructure of the farm, economic aspects, and benefits of grazing to biodiversity and landscape values. Exter- nal factors found to affect the decision of grazing were incentives, regulations, and consumer expectations. Animal welfare was found to be a basis for production for many and the most important feature valued for good farming, to which grazing was seen to contribute. The re- sults imply subsidies regarding grazing should be higher for grazing to be considered profita- ble and more enjoyable by farmers.

Biodiversity loss and ecosystem service degradation and the related economic costs are increasingly recognized as sources of financial risks. The risks are arising through physical and transition sources of risks caused by dependencies and impacts upon biodiversity and ecosystem services. Therefore, it has become increasingly important for both individual financial institutions as well as central banks and financial supervisors to better understand and manage these risks. However, biodiversity loss is associated with unique complexity and uncertainty, making it a challenging task. The purpose of this thesis was to study the linkages between biodiversity loss and financial stability in Finland. This was done by assessing the financial exposure of Finnish credit institutions to sectors dependent on ecosystem services for their production processes. A quantitative analysis was conducted in order to combine loan data obtained from the Bank of Finland and ecosystem service data obtained from the ENCORE database. The results showed that 23% of loans provided by Finnish credit institutions are exposed to high or very high biodiversity-related financial risks. The sectors associated with most value at risks were real estate and agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors. Disruptions of ecosystem services providing surface water and climate regulation were posing the highest financial risks. The findings represent a first step towards assessing the exposure of the Finnish financial system to biodiversity-related financial risks. The results and previous literature indicate that physical biodiversity-related financial risk exposures are significant for individual financial institutions and for the whole financial system, despite the prevailing methodological challenges and gaps in knowledge. In order to complete a comprehensive biodiversity-related financial risk assessment, further research is needed.

Food literacy is a noteworthy topic to be studied due to food’s considerable environmental and health effects. When food literacy and its characteristics are known, food literacy can be used as a tool to improve people’s health and the condition of the environment. Thus, this thesis aims to reveal the extent of food literacy among Finnish upper secondary school students. In this context, food literacy emphasises food-related environmental and health knowledge. Environmental knowledge is understanding of the global environmental impact of food. Health knowledge, on the other hand, is the familiarity with the relationship between excessive meat consumption and Finnish common diseases along with beliefs regarding diets and food products as a source of protein. This thesis also aims to identify to what extent does the food literacy differ based on gender, study year and living area. This study was performed as a quantitative sample survey and the data was collected using an online Typeform -questionnaire. The questionnaire reached respondents from many different Finnish localities, mainly from cities. The final data consisted of 1320 individuals and it was analysed using IMB SPSS Statistics 24 software. The following methods were used to analyse data: frequency analysis, an Independent Samples t Test, a One-way ANOVA, and a Post-hoc LSD test. Gender, study year and living area were used as grouping variables to examine the differences between groups. The results show that the students named school as the main source of food literacy. Moreover, the results indicate that awareness regarding food production, dietary health and proteins increase significantly from the first to the third study year. The students acknowledged food production causing environmental problems and that the share of food in the consumer’s climatic impact is considerable. Nevertheless, the students underestimated the climatic impact of cheese and they were unaware of the more specific characteristics of food’s environmental impacts. They also had food-related environmental misconceptions considering packaging, transportation and meat consumption. Moreover, approximately half or more of the students were aware of the connection between excessive meat consumption and the increased risk of distinct common diseases. Most of the students acknowledged a versatile vegetarian diet as being a healthy choice. The study also reveals that female students had notably higher dietary health knowledge than male students. This Master’s thesis study mainly supports the findings of previous studies on food-related knowledge. The results elucidate the extent, characteristics, gaps and misconceptions of students’ food literacy. These findings may be utilized to improve school education on food literacy, alter misconceptions and fill the gaps of knowledge in pursuit of improving the health of people and the condition of the environment.

In this study, the goal was to determine which nutrient, phosphorus or nitrogen, limits the phytoplankton growth at the Vanajavesi freshwater site. The aims were to detect spatial and temporal changes and find out if the wastewater treatment plant (hereafter, WWTP) located by the study site affects the nutrient concentrations and the limiting nutrient. The reliability of determining limiting nutrient by bioassays and measuring the phytoplankton response to different treatments as fluorescence was also evaluated. The study was conducted because knowledge of nutrient limitation is essential when allocating resources to reduce nutrient loading and planning other remediation practices in eutrophicated waterbodies. According to the EU Water Framework Directive, all waterbodies in the EU must be in a good ecological status by the year 2027. This goal is yet to be achieved in Vanajavesi; the ecological status of the river Vanajanreitti is poor and that of lake Vanajanselkä is moderate. The samples for bioassays were taken from five different locations. Three sampling sites were in the river and two by the lake. Based on the direction which the water flows, one of the sampling sites was before the outlet from the WWTP and the rest after it. The bioassays were carried out with the water and natural phytoplankton community taken from the study site. The experiment was conducted five times: in November, March, May, July and August. The temperature and light conditions in the incubation room were set to mimic those in Vanajavesi at each given time. Part of the preparations was to filter out the zooplankton using 50 μm plankton net. There were four different treatments: control without nutrient additions, nitrogen addition, phosphorus addition and nitrogen and phosphorus additions. Fluorescence from the 2 litre incubation bottles was measured every 1-3 days during each experiment. Chlorophyll a was determined in laboratory before and after the experiments. Nutrient concentrations were also determined before each experiment. Small seasonal and temporal changes were observed in the nutrient concentrations and the limiting nutrient. These changes were most likely due to changing seasons, effluent from the WWTP and denitrification at lake Vanajanselkä. Phosphorus limited phytoplankton growth year around at all places. At the end of the summer also nitrogen was limiting. In July co-limitation was detected in all sampling sites. In situations of co-limitation there was either no secondary limiting nutrient, or it was phosphorus. Only once, in August at the sampling point before the outlet from the WWTP, was the secondary limiting nutrient nitrogen. On average the nutrient concentrations were higher in the river than in the lake. Chlorophyll a concentrations and some nutrient concentrations were higher after the WWTP. However, no significant negative impact due to WWTP could be detected, especially at lake Vanajanselkä and the WWTP did not result in a change from phosphorus limitation to nitrogen limitation. Bioassays and the phytoplankton yield measured with a fluorometer was a reliable way of determining the limiting nutrient. Chlorophyll a concentrations verified the fluorescence results. The probe used in this study measured only the fluorescence of chlorophyll a. Even more accurate result of the phytoplankton biomass would have been obtained with a probe that measures also the fluorescence of phycocyanin, the photosynthetic pigment in cyanobacteria, because cyanobacteria has less chlorophyll a than other phytoplankton groups. As Vanajavesi is phosphorus limited or co-limited by phosphorus and nitrogen year around, reductions in phosphorus loading will likely improve the water quality. The main source of phosphorus to Vanajavesi is the nutrient loading from agricultural practises on the drainage basin. Efficient management of this diffuse loading will cause the phytoplankton biomass, especially the biomass of harmful cyanobacteria, to decrease. Nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria is not dependent on the nitrogen concentrations in the water column, but the concentration of phosphorus. Significantly reducing the phosphorus loading is a prerequisite for the Vanajanreitti and Vanajavesi to be in a good ecological status by the year 2027.

The topic of forest fires has gathered a lot of media attention in recent years as it relates closely to climate change and other sustainability issues. The media has an important role in communicating these issues as it affects, how the public percieves them, how different sustainability problems are defined and what kind of solutions are seen plausible. I became interested in how the media represents the issue of forest fires. My aim in this thesis is to find out, how the Colombian news media has framed the Amazon rainforest fires. As my material I used the news articles from the Colombian news media El Tiempo. I definined my timeframe from July 2019 to september 2019 because at that time the news subject was of high interest. After the initial search I went through the articles and left out any irrelevant ones. I was left with 24 news articles. As an analytic tool I utilized qualitative frame analysis guided by Robert Entman´s definition of frames and used ATLAS.ti to make an initial thematic coding. After that I mapped out all the actors that were cited in the news articles and divided them into groups. Using these actor groups, I searched for the frames. There were eight actor groups, politicians and political organizations being the most prominent one. Looking at how these actors talked about the forest fires, two main frames came out: populist and scientific. The populist frame concentrated mainly on Jair Bolsonaro. In this frame there was a lot of nationalist and economic arguments and responsability was directed away from him. There seemed to be a lot of enemies also. The second frame concentrated in deforestation, climate change and the forest fires being a global issue. In this frame international actors used economic and political pressure in order to affect Bolsonaro´s policy solutions. The research showed, how difficult it can be to solve shared global problem and made visible a historical political division between authoritarianism and democracy. An other important notion is the lack of marginalized groups in the news media.

Parasitoid host interactions are intimately associated with food web dynamics as well as with evolutionary change. The parasitoid s possibility to expand its host range or switch to different hosts is affected by parasitic strategy. Strong specialization to a narrow host repertoire can arise e.g. if the larva spends considerable time in close contact with an active, developing host (koinobiosis). In contrast, an ectoparasitic larva, growing rapidly on a sessile host, does not have to be equally tightly adapted to host physiology. This may permit a wider host range. However, there are other restricting factors, such as egg production capacity. Extant parasitoids show a staggering species diversity, most notably among the Hymenoptera. Theories concerning speciation in association with host range have been developed, but draw from knowledge of merely a small part of this diversity. This study adds information by showing a number of radical host shifts in the evolutionary history of the ichneumonid wasp genus Gelis. Species of this genus exploit either insect prepupae or spider eggs. These are similar in being rather defenceless, aside from a protective silk covering. Nonetheless, differences are large enough to restrict Gelis species to each utilise only one of the two groups. In order to trace ancient host group shifts, host data was mapped onto a phylogeny constructed through bayesian analysis of sequence data. Sequences from the COI (mitochondrial) and ITS2 (nuclear, noncoding) regions were used. The results suggested at least four host group shifts within the genus. In addition, wing reduction was found to have occurred in two different lineages. Through COI barcode sequence clustering supported by morphological traits, a previously undescribed species from the G. bicolor-species complex was detected. The phylogenetic analyses also indicated the existence of further cryptic species, and the genus Thaumatogelis Schwarz was found to be nested within Gelis.