Central Europe and the Non-European World in the Long 19th Century explores various ways in which inhabitants of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy perceived and depicted the outside world during the era ...of European imperialism. Focusing particularly on the Czech Lands, Hungary, and Slovakia, with other nations as comparative examples, this collection shows how Central Europeans viewed other regions and their populations, from the Balkans and the Middle East to Africa, China, and America. Although the societies under Habsburg rule found themselves (with rare exceptions) outside the realm of colonialism, their inhabitants also engaged in colonial projects and benefited from these interactions. Rather than taking one “Central European” approach, the volume draws upon accounts not only by writers and travelers, but by painters, missionaries, and other observers, reflecting the diversity that characterized both the region itself and its views of non-Western cultures.
•The Czech Republic has become an epicentre of bark beetle outbreaks in Europe.•We identified the transition from wind- to drought-driven outbreak dynamics.•The outbreak triggered a cascade of social ...impacts restricting management operations.•Effective responses require fundamental changes in the regional forest-based sector.
Outbreaks of tree-killing insects are intensifying globally, affecting economies, human well-being, and driving ecosystem transitions. The Czech Republic has recently become Europe’s epicenter of the outbreak of spruce bark beetle Ips typographus, the most aggressive species in Eurasia. We investigated a countrywide outbreak dynamic during the period 2003–2019, with a special focus on the period 2017–2019 when the outbreak reached an unprecedented intensity. In order to identify main outbreak drivers, we investigated annual time series of the volume of trees killed by bark beetles in the Czech districts (n = 77), and a suite of climatic and forest structure-related predictors using Generalized Additive Models. Finally, we reviewed a large body of public materials to understand broader social, ecological, and economic implications of the outbreak.
We found that bark beetles were damaging 0.2–1.4% of Norway spruce growing stock annually across the Czech Republic in the period 2003–2016. This level increased to 3.1–5.4% in 2017–2019, causing the total depletion of spruce in some regions. The long-term bark beetle dynamics (2003–2019) was driven by the combination of wind disturbance and climatic drivers, represented in our study by annual temperature anomaly and Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index. However, the effect of wind was diminished during the period 2017–2019, whereas the effect of drought dominated. Our findings thus suggest a transition from wind- to drought-driven bark beetle dynamics.
The outbreak and subsequent large-scale salvaging and wood transportation affected quality of life of people in a broad vicinity of outbreak areas. Extensive management actions aggravated some of the notorious conflicts between forest management and nature conservation, and highlighted the poor harmonization of respective policies. A decrease in timber price, an excessive workload, and other cascading effects caused severe revenue loss, requiring state interventions amounting to ca 260 million EUR in 2018–2019.
We suggest that increasing frequency of climate extremes in combination with the unfavorable forest structure pushed Central European spruce forests to the margin of their ecological space and unfolded large-scale forest transformations. Effective responses will require fundamental structural changes in the regional forest-based sector, particularly aiming at increased social and ecological resilience.
Auf der Agenda der Bundesregierung stand 1954 v.a. die Wiedergewinnung der Souveranitat. Das Hauptaugenmerk galt der Europaischen Verteidigungsgemeinschaft und dem damit verknupften Inkrafttreten des ...Deutschland-Vertrags. Eine neue Losung fand sich mit den Pariser Vertragen vom 23.10. Zentrale Themen waren zudem die Deutschland-Frage, eine Regelung fur das Saargebiet und eine Vielzahl aus der Zeit des Zweiten Weltkriegs herruhrende Probleme.
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•Controversial Robinia has positive economic but negative environmental impacts.•We summarize the ecological and socio-economic impact of Robinia in Central Europe.•We assess Robinia ...history, vegetation ecology, invasiveness and management.•Dry and semi-dry grasslands are the most threatened by Robinia invasion.•Stratified management combining tolerance and strict eradication is needed.
Robinia pseudoacacia, invaded many countries a long time ago and is now a common part of the Central European landscape. Positive economic but negative environmental impacts of Robinia result in conflicts of interest between nature conservation, forestry, urban landscaping, beekeepers and the public when defining management priorities. Because current legislation will determine the future distribution of Robinia in the landscape, a comprehensive view of this species is necessary. Although this species is well studied, most of the scientific papers deal with the economic aspects. Other information is published in local journals or reports. Therefore we reviewed the ecological and socio-economic impact of Robinia placing particular emphasis on the species’ history, vegetation ecology, invasiveness and management. In Central Europe, Robinia is limited climatically by late spring frost combined with a short vegetation period, soil hypoxia, shade and frequent major disturbances. The long historical tradition of using Robinia for afforestation has resulted in its popularity as a widespread forest tree and it being an important part of the economy in some countries. The main reasons are its fast growth, valuable and resistant wood, suitability for amelioration, reclamation of disturbed sites and erosion control, honey-making and recently dendromass production. On the other hand, a side-effect of planting this nitrogen-fixing pioneer tree, very tolerant of the nature of the substrate, is its propagation and spread, which pose a problem for nature conservation. Robinia is considered invasive, threatening especially dry and semi-dry grasslands, some of the most species-rich and endangered types of habitat in the region, causing extinction of many endangered light-demanding plants and invertebrates due to changes in light regime, microclimate and soil conditions. Other often invaded habitats include open dry forests and shrubland, alluvial habitats, agrarian landscapes, urban and industrial environments and disturbed sites, e.g. post-fire sites, forest clearings or degraded forestry plantations. Without forestry, black locust abundance would decrease during succession in forests with highly competitive and shade tolerant trees and in mature forests it occurs only as admixture of climax trees. The limited pool of native woody species, lack of serious natural enemies and a dense cover of grasses and sedges can suppress forest succession and favour the development of Robinia monodominant stands over 70years old. A stratified approach, which combines both tolerance in some areas and strict eradication at valuable sites, provides the best option for achieving a sustainable coexistence of Robinia with people and nature.
The Neolithic period in Europe was subject to marked climatic variations during the fourth millennium BCE in the Alpine arc, marking the transition between the recent Atlantic and the Subboreal. This ...phase is characterized by falling temperatures and rising humidity in the Northern Hemisphere. Within this phase, between 3700 and 3250 BCE, a more intense phase takes place, known as Rootmoos 2 or Piora 2. This phase is characterized by a significant drop in lake water levels. This climatic change had repercussions on lakeside dwellers, notably through the modification and adaptation of their diet and subsistence modes. Intestinal parasites (helminths), found by human and animals via parasitic markers, seem to respond over time to these climatic variations. At first sight, low lake level phases are characterized by significant proportions of Trichuris at the expense of Diphyllobothrium, as well as an increase in Fasciola. These phases therefore seem to favour parasites indicative of agropastoral activities. During periods of high lake levels, Diphyllobothrium increase in number, pointing to a higher frequency of fishing practices. In sum, during periods of cooler/wetter climate, Neolithic lakeside populations seem to focus more on fishing produce, which may be a response to a destabilization of previously established agropastoral systems, marking a return to more opportunistic behaviour with the exploitation of products from the direct environment. This pilot study tends to evaluate if the evolution of parasitic communities in the 4th millennium BCE could therefore be used to complete our understanding of the effects of climatic variations on societies, both as a direct consequence of environmental destabilization (effect on the hosts) and the result of the behavioural adaptation of the inhabitants, even if it is still difficult to determine the importance of the influence of each factor on these variations. Despite some remaining challenges in the current study, the integration of paleoparasitic data into broader paleoenvironmental models appears promising. Future research can continue to develop along this path.
•Compilation of all the available data for lacustrine sites dated for the 4th millennium BCE and from Central Europe lake-dwelling area.•Application of the seriograph method and a novel index to analyse intestinal parasitic spectrum diversity.•Evaluation of the intestinal parasitic spectrum response to climate variations and human opportunistic behaviour.
This book—the first of a three-volume overview of comparative and transnational historiography in Europe—focuses on the complex engagement of various comparative methodological approaches with ...different transnational and supranational frameworks. It considers scales from universal history to meso- regional (i.e. Balkans, Central Europe, etc.) perspectives. In the form of a reader, it displays 18 historical studies written between 1900 and 1943. The collection starts with the French and German methodological discussions around the turn of the twentieth century, stemming from the effort to integrate history with other emerging social sciences on a comparative methodological basis. The volume then turns to the question of structural and institutional comparisons, revisiting various historiographical ventures that tried to sketch out a broader (regional or European-level) interpretative framework to assess the legal systems, patterns of agrarian production, and the common ethnographic and sociocultural features. In the third part, a number of texts are presented, which put forward a supra-national research framework as an antidote to national exclusivism. While in Western Europe the most obvious such framework was pan-European, in East Central Europe the agenda of comparison was linked usually to a meso-regional framework. The studies are accompanied by short contextual introductions including biographical information on the respective authors.
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