What was behind the bark? : An assessment of decay among urban Tilia, Betula and Acer trees felled as hazardous in the Helsinki City area

Old trees growing in urban environments are often felled due to symptoms of mechanical defects that could be hazardous to people and property. The decisions concerning these removals are justified by risk assessments carried out by tree care professionals. The major motivation for this study was to determine the most common profiles of potential hazard characteristics for the three most common urban tree genera in Helsinki City: Tilia, Betula and Acer, and in this way improve management practices and protection of old amenity trees. For this research, material from approximately 250 urban trees was collected in cooperation with the City of Helsinki Public Works Department during 2001 - 2004. From the total number of trees sampled, approximately 70% were defined as hazardous. The tree species had characteristic features as potential hazard profiles. For Tilia trees, hollowed heartwood with low fungal activity and advanced decay caused by Ganoderma lipsiense were the two most common profiles. In Betula spp., the primary reason for tree removal was usually lowered amenity value in terms of decline of the crown. Internal cracks, most often due to weak fork formation, were common causes of potential failure in Acer spp. Decay caused by Rigidoporus populinus often increased the risk of stem breakage in these Acer trees. Of the decay fungi observed, G. lipsiense was most often the reason for the increased risk of stem collapse. Other fungi that also caused extensive decay were R. populinus, Inonotus obliquus, Kretzschmaria deusta and Phellinus igniarius. The most common decay fungi in terms of incidence were Pholiota spp., but decay caused by these species did not have a high potential for causing stem breakage, because it rarely extended to the cambium. The various evaluations used in the study suggested contradictions in felling decisions based on trees displaying different stages of decay. For protection of old urban trees, it is crucial to develop monitoring methods so that tree care professionals could better analyse the rate of decay progression towards the sapwood and separate those trees with decreasing amounts of sound wood from those with decay that is restricted to the heartwood area.

A Success Story or a Failure? : Representing the European Integration in the Curricula and Textbooks of Five Countries

The economic, political and social face of Europe has been changing rapidly in the past decades. These changes are unique in the history of Europe, but not without challenges for the nation states. The support for the European integration varies among the countries. In order to understand why certain developments or changes are perceived as threatening or as desired by different member countries, we must consider the social representations of the European integration on the national level: how the EU is represented to its citizens in media and in educational systems, particularly in the curricula and textbooks. The current study is concerned with the social representations of the European integration in the curricula and school textbooks in five European countries: France, Britain, Germany, Finland and Sweden. Besides that, the first volume of the common Franco-German history textbook was analyzed, since it has been seen as a model for a common European history textbook. As the collective representations, values and identities are dominantly mediated and imposed through media and educational systems, the national curricula and textbooks make an interesting starting point for the study of the European integration and of national and European identities. The social representations theory provides a comprehensive framework for the study of the European integration. By analyzing the curricula and history and civics textbooks of major educational publishers, the study aimed to demonstrate what is written on the European integration and how it is portrayed how the European integration is understood, made familiar and concretized in the educational context in the five European countries. To grasp the phenomenon of the European integration in the textbooks in its entirety, it was investigated from various perspectives. The two analysis methods of content analysis, the automatic analysis with ALCESTE and a more qualitative theory-driven content analysis, were carried out to give a more vivid and multifaceted picture of the object of the research. The analysis of the text was complemented with the analysis of visual material. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative methods, the contents, processes, visual images, transformations and structures of the social representations of European integration, as well as the communicative styles of the textbooks were examined. This study showed the divergent social representations of the European integration, anchored in the nation states, in the five member countries of the European Union. The social representations were constructed around different central core elements: French Europe in the French textbooks, Ambivalent Europe in the British textbooks, Influential and Unifying EU in the German textbooks, Enabling and Threatening EU in the Finnish textbooks, Sceptical EU in the Swedish textbooks and EU as a World Model in the Franco-German textbook. Some elements of the representations were shared by all countries such as peace and economic aspects of the European cooperation, whereas other elements of representations were found more frequently in some countries than in others, such as ideological, threatening or social components of the phenomenon European integration. The study also demonstrated the linkage between social representations of the EU and national and European identities. The findings of this study are applicable to the study of the European integration, to the study of education, as well as to the social representation theory.