•A 3.0×106m3 rock slope accelerated measurably before failure.•Slope stability changed rapidly before failure.•15 debris flows occurred within 7 days after failure (13 in absence of rainfall).•First ...debris flow initiated within 30s after rock avalanche deposition.•Wet sediment entrainment and impact loading enhanced deposit mobility.
Catastrophic collapse of large rock slopes ranks as one of the most hazardous natural phenomena in mountain landscapes. The cascade of events, from rock-slope failure, to rock avalanche and the near-immediate release of debris flows has not previously been described from direct observations. We report on the 2017, 3.0×106m3 failure on Pizzo Cengalo in Switzerland, which led to human casualties and significant damage to infrastructure. Based on remote sensing and field investigations, we find a change in critical slope stability prior to failure for which permafrost may have played a destabilizing role. The resulting rock avalanche traveled for 3.2km and removed over one million m3 of glacier ice and debris deposits from a previous rock avalanche in 2011. Whereas this entrainment did not lead to an unusually large runout distance, it favored debris flow activity from the 2017 rock avalanche deposits: the first debris flow occurred with a delay of 30s followed by ten debris flows within 9.5h and two additional events two days later, notably in the absence of rainfall. We hypothesize that entrainment and impact loading of saturated sediments explain the initial mobility of the 2017 rock avalanche deposits leading to a near-immediate initiation of debris flows. This explains why an earlier rock avalanche at the same site in 2011 was not directly followed by debris flows and underlines the importance of considering sediment saturation in a rock avalanche’s runout path for Alpine hazard assessments.
The studied soil profile under the Main Market Square (MMS) in Krakow was characterised by the influence of medieval metallurgical activity. In the presented soil section lithological discontinuity ...(LD) was found, which manifests itself in the form of cultural layers (CLs). Moreover, in this paper LD detection methods based on soil texture are presented. For the first time, three different ways to identify the presence of LD in the urban soils are suggested. The presence of LD had an influence on the content and distribution of heavy metals within the soil profile. The content of heavy metals in the CLs under the MMS in Krakow was significantly higher than the content in natural horizons. In addition, there were distinct differences in the content of heavy metals within CLs. Profile variability and differences in the content of heavy metals and phosphorus within the CLs under the MMS were activity indicators of Krakow inhabitants in the past. This paper presents alternative methods for the assessment of the degree of heavy metal contamination in urban soils using selected pollution indices. On the basis of the studied total concentration of heavy metals (Zn, Pb, Cu, Mn, Cr, Cd, Ni, Sn, Ag) and total phosphorus content, the Geoaccumulation Index (Igeo), Enrichment Factor (EF), Sum of Pollution Index (PIsum), Single Pollution Index (PI), Nemerow Pollution Index (PINemerow) and Potential Ecological Risk (RI) were calculated using different local and reference geochemical backgrounds. The use of various geochemical backgrounds is helpful to evaluate the assessment of soil pollution. The individual CLs differed from each other according to the degree of pollution. The different values of pollution indices within the studied soil profile showed that LDS should not be evaluated in terms of contamination as one, homogeneous soil profile but each separate CL should be treated individually.
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•Unique and well preserved profile below Main Market Square in Krakow was examined in terms of historical pollution.•Studied profile revealed features of lithological discontinuity.•Different ways of LD determination were shown.•Cultural layers serve as archives of human-activity in medieval times.•Pollution indices help to understand sources of heavy metals and assess environmental risks.
Stress inversions from focal mechanisms require knowledge of which nodal plane is the fault. If such information is missing, and faults and auxiliary nodal planes are interchanged, the stress ...inversions can produce inaccurate results. It is shown that the linear inversion method developed by Michael is reasonably accurate when retrieving the principal stress directions even when the selection of fault planes in focal mechanisms is incorrect. However, the shape ratio is more sensitive to the proper choice of the fault and substituting the faults by auxiliary nodal planes introduces significant errors. This difficulty is removed by modifying Michael's method and inverting jointly for stress and for fault orientations. The fault orientations are determined by applying the fault instability constraint and the stress is calculated in iterations. As a by-product, overall friction on faults is determined. Numerical tests show that the new iterative stress inversion is fast and accurate and performs much better than the standard linear inversion. The method is exemplified on real data from central Crete and from the West-Bohemia swarm area of the Czech Republic. The joint iterative inversion identified correctly 36 of 38 faults in the central Crete data. In the West Bohemia data, the faults identified by the inversion were close to the principal fault planes delineated by foci clustering. The overall friction on faults was estimated to be 0.75 and 0.85 for the central Crete and West Bohemia data, respectively.
•Reasons for use of distributed process-based hydrological models are reviewed.•Avenues for developments of process-based hydrological models are presented.•Hydrology will depend on appropriate use ...of process-based models.
Process-based hydrological models have a long history dating back to the 1960s. Criticized by some as over-parameterized, overly complex, and difficult to use, a more nuanced view is that these tools are necessary in many situations and, in a certain class of problems, they are the most appropriate type of hydrological model. This is especially the case in situations where knowledge of flow paths or distributed state variables and/or preservation of physical constraints is important. Examples of this include: spatiotemporal variability of soil moisture, groundwater flow and runoff generation, sediment and contaminant transport, or when feedbacks among various Earth’s system processes or understanding the impacts of climate non-stationarity are of primary concern. These are situations where process-based models excel and other models are unverifiable. This article presents this pragmatic view in the context of existing literature to justify the approach where applicable and necessary. We review how improvements in data availability, computational resources and algorithms have made detailed hydrological simulations a reality. Avenues for the future of process-based hydrological models are presented suggesting their use as virtual laboratories, for design purposes, and with a powerful treatment of uncertainty.
•The Czech Republic has become an epicentre of disturbance intensification in Europe.•A new framework for a country-wide prognosis of forest resources is presented.•Projecting recent disturbance ...intensity up to 2050 dramatically decreases growing stock.•The major disturbance wave was projected to last 16 years until resource depletion.•The prognosis suggests a need for major structural changes in the regional forestry sector.
Forest management decisions increasingly rely on modelling tools, which help identify future risks, optimize management decisions, and provide a suite of indicators beyond timber production. Here we developed and tested a novel simulation and upscaling framework (SUF) and used it for prognosing forest resources of the Czech Republic (Central Europe), which is currently one of Europe's hotspots of disturbance intensification.
The SUF is based on an empirical forest model that simulates the development of 8240 forest stands representing forest conditions in 206 administrative districts of the Czech Republic. The effect of natural disturbances is considered via empirical species- and age-specific mortality probability (MP) functions parameterized based on the national forest damage reports and remote sensing data. An upscaling procedure was developed to obtain district- and country-wide estimates. We tested this framework for its ability to (i) reproduce the initial forest conditions from the year 2003, (ii) reproduce forest dynamics in 2003–2016 (i.e., before the recent disturbance wave), (iii) reproduce the recent mortality pulse in 2017–2020, and (iv) generate plausible and consistent outputs under several disturbance and management settings in 2003–2050.
The SUF reliably reproduced forest dynamics in both testing periods. The country-wide growing stock (GS) simulated for 2004–2050 oscillated around the initial value of 661 mill. m3 if the reference MP and management were considered. Using the elevated MP (corresponding with the recent disturbance period) increased the mean annual mortality rate from 0.78 % to 1.19 % and caused GS to decrease by 21 % in 2050. The wave of elevated mortality lasted 16 years, ceasing in 2033 due to the depletion of vulnerable stands. Reducing the rotation length by 40 % increased the harvests temporarily and caused GS to decrease by 29 and 33 % in 2050 under reference and elevated MP, respectively. At the same time, mortality was reduced by up to 18 % due to the removal of potentially vulnerable stands.
The presented SUF is able to accommodate diverse forestry data, reproduce real forest dynamics, and generate outputs that correspond with the national forestry statistics. Flexible adoption of different mortality and management regimes makes it a versatile tool for supporting management decisions and policies. The presented simulations highlighted the negative prospects of the regional forests and the need for a profound transformation of management practices and the regional forest-based sector.
In recent decades, the most remarkable feature of East-Central European (ECE) states has been their engagement in a deconsolidation process that necessitates the reconceptualising of European Studies ...and the theory of democracy. In the early ’90s, during the “revolution of high expectations,” consolidation was the key term in the conceptual framework of the transitology paradigm, but this approach was questioned increasingly in the 2000s and rejected in the 2010s. In its place, deconsolidation was introduced as one of a wide array of similar terms referring to the decline, backsliding or regression of democracy and later as one of a whole “other” family of opposite terms like (semi-)authoritarian system and competitive/elected autocracy. Indeed, rather than a transition to democracy, a tendency to transition to authoritarian rule has been observed in the ECE states in general and in Poland and Hungary in particular. In the last quarter century, the twin terms of Europeanisation and democratisation, which denote normative approaches, have been the main conceptual pillars of analyses of the ECE states. It turns out, however, that the opposite processes of de-Europeanisation and de-democratisation can now also be observed in these countries.
Mineral phosphorus (P) fertilizers contain contaminants that are potentially hazardous to humans and the environment. Frequent mineral P fertilizer applications can cause heavy metals to accumulate ...and reach undesirable concentrations in agricultural soils. There is particular concern about Cadmium (Cd) and Uranium (U) accumulation because these metals are toxic and can endanger soil fertility, leach into groundwater, and be taken up by crops. We determined total Cd and U concentrations in more than 400 topsoil and subsoil samples obtained from 216 agricultural sites across Switzerland. We also investigated temporal changes in Cd and U concentrations since 1985 in soil at six selected Swiss national soil monitoring network sites. The mean U concentrations were 16% higher in arable topsoil than in grassland topsoil. The Cd concentrations in arable and grassland soils did not differ, which we attribute to soil management practices and Cd sources other than mineral P fertilizers masking Cd inputs from mineral P fertilizers. The mean Cd and U concentrations were 58% and 9% higher, respectively, in arable topsoil than in arable subsoil, indicating that significant Cd and U inputs to arable soils occurred in the past. Geochemical mass balances confirmed this, indicating an accumulation of 52% for Cd and 6% for U. Only minor temporal changes were found in the Cd concentrations in topsoil from the six soil-monitoring sites, but U concentrations in topsoil from three sites had significantly increased since 1985. Sewage sludge and atmospheric deposition were previously important sources of Cd to agricultural soils, but today mineral P fertilizers are the dominant sources of Cd and U. Future Cd and U inputs to agricultural soils may be reduced by using optimized management practices, establishing U threshold values for mineral P fertilizers and soils, effectively enforcing threshold values, and developing and using clean recycled P fertilizers.
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•Cd and U have seen significant accumulation in Swiss agricultural topsoil.•Besides fertilizers, atmospheric deposition and sewage sludge added Cd to the topsoil.•The main source of U added to soil in Switzerland is U impurities in mineral P fertilizers.•To avoid accumulation, Cd and U inputs to arable soils needs to be controlled.
Past accumulation of Cd and U and ongoing accumulation of U in agricultural soils point to the need to use “clean” P fertilizers.
Our research provides valuable insights into the uneven distribution of groundwater copepods in the lowland river valley ecosystem using an integrative taxonomy approach. The study was conducted in ...101 wells in the Biebrza River Valley (northeastern Poland), which is one of the largest and best-preserved lowland rivers in Europe. It stands out for its exceptional biodiversity and pristine natural landscapes. Groundwater copepods were found in 49 of the 101 analyzed wells. We identified ten species of Copepoda and eight species of Cladocera. The most frequent copepods were Diacyclops bicuspidatus, Diacyclops crassicaudis, Canthocamptus staphylinus, Paracyclops cf. fimbriatus, Diacyclops bisetosus, and Eucyclops serrulatus. The aforementioned species were categorized as stygophiles, and no stygobionts were detected. Our findings suggest that the groundwater Copepoda community in this region is relatively stable and composed mostly of stygophiles along with stygoxenes. We did not find any significant impact of environmental parameters or different aquifers on the distribution of copepods, suggesting a patchy distribution of groundwater copepods in the lowland river valley. The relatively high presence of stygoxenes suggests that the exchange of organisms between surface water and groundwater plays a vital role in maintaining the diversity of microcrustaceans in lowland river valleys. Our study contributes to filling the knowledge gap regarding groundwater fauna in lowland Europe, particularly in areas affected by Pleistocene glaciations.
The war in Ukraine has accelerated Europe’s decoupling from Russia in the energy sphere. Nuclear energy is no exception. Most East Central European countries traditionally reliant on Russian nuclear ...technologies and services are diversifying away from Rosatom to seek alternative vendors. This paper analyzes the difficulties and risks associated with the decoupling process. Despite a range of apparently available options, East Central European countries pursuing decoupling may struggle to find both technically competent and (geo)politically viable nuclear energy vendors to fulfill their new-build, maintenance, and fuel supply needs – a concerning scenario given the importance of nuclear energy to the energy security and decarbonization agenda of the region and wider Europe. Avoiding this scenario requires efforts from all actors. First, Western vendors must improve their capacity to deliver viable reactor designs as well as competitive fuel and maintenance services to the region’s existing reactors. Second, regional nuclear industry stakeholders must further develop local expertise and equipment manufacturing capacity while exploring non-Western vendor options. Last but not least, local and international political actors must reduce their interference in the technical and commercial process of vendor selection so as not to exclude the most competent suppliers based on their country of origin.
•Nuclear-reliant East Central European states are decoupling from Rosatom services.•As favored alternatives, U.S. and French reactor vendors lack key technical capacity.•China has reactor design, equipment, and fuel solutions but is barred by geopolitics.•Stagnation of the regional nuclear sector would harm energy security, decarbonization.•The solution for local actors lies in local capacity and pragmatic vendor selection.
This reflection surveys the political and academic career of Dr. Erhard Busek, who passed away in March 2022. It focuses on his relationship with Central European dissidents in the 1980s and his ...contributions toward dialogue and understanding in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe. His special relationship with Hungary and Hungarians is prioritized.
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