Abstract Limited visibility in the underwater environment often restricts opportunities for archaeological prospection. Especially in reservoirs with a high content of suspended solids, methods based ...on acoustics prove to be extremely useful. This study represents the first high‐resolution acoustic mapping and archaeological prospections of the Old Oder Canal, which has extremely poor visibility. The study site is located near the town of Krosno Odrzańskie in Poland. The town is one of the country's most significant river crossings and settlements of mediaeval origin (including its wooden bridges). The following research objectives were identified: (1) exploration of the Old Oder Canal, including underwater acoustics and archaeological prospections; (2) analysis and interpretation of the study area based on acquired datasets; and (3) evaluation of secondary features of the river bathymetry for identification of archaeological objects. Possible locations of archaeological objects were determined based on analysis and interpretation of multibeam echosounder measurements of the riverbed. Fieldwork allowed structural elements of mediaeval bridges to be found and dendrochronological sampling performed. Feature selection analyses allowed the determination and evaluation of geomorphometric attributes, combining the characteristics of the discovered objects and diagnostics in order better to differentiate archaeological remains. Proposed secondary features may facilitate archaeological explorations in difficult environments.
QUESTIONS: Are the structural characteristics of natural beech forests predominant on small monitoring plots representative of the large‐scale features of these forests? Do the findings of our ...large‐scale investigation support the hypothesis that this primeval beech forest is shaped by fine‐scale processes, or is there evidence that high‐severity disturbance events have affected its structure? LOCATION: Ukrainian Carpathians, Uholka‐Shyrokyi Luh, the largest primeval beech forest in Europe, covering 102.8 km².METHODS: On 314 (500 m²) circular plots, systematically distributed across the forest, all living and dead trees with a DBH ≥6 cm were assessed. Lying deadwood, tree regeneration, the size of canopy gaps and the number of canopy layers were recorded. Spatial analyses were conducted using Moran's I. Dendrochronological analysis was used to reconstruct tree ages and growth patterns. RESULTS: The forest is characterized overall by a density of 435.0 ± 12.2 ha⁻¹(mean ± SE) living trees, a basal area of 36.6 ± 0.8 m²·ha⁻¹, a volume of living trees of 582.1 ± 13.5 m³·ha⁻¹and a total deadwood volume of 162.5 ± 8.4 m³·ha⁻¹. Beech is the dominant species (97.3 ± 0.7%, by basal area), interspersed with mostly deciduous species with moderate shade tolerance. The forest canopy is multi‐layered, with a high abundance of old trees, and with canopy gaps rarely larger than the crown projection area of a few trees. CONCLUSIONS: The results lend support to findings from small monitoring plots, but our landscape approach allows a reliable estimation of key forest characteristics such as basal area and standing volume, which tend to be overestimated in studies on subjectively placed small monitoring plots. We conclude that disturbance events of moderate or higher severity have left only few discernible traces in forest structure or species composition. All findings suggest that this forest is characterized by a mainly small‐scale disturbance regime, leading to a homogeneity of forest characteristics of the living stand at larger spatial scales and causing only minor fluctuations around the average values of forest parameters observed.
River meandering controls the age of floodplains through its characteristic paces of growth and eventual cutoff of channel bends, forming oxbows. Hence, floodplain‐age distributions should reflect a ...river's characteristic size and migration rate. This hypothesis has been previously tested in numerical simulations, yet without systematic comparisons with natural systems. Here we analyze oxbow spacing and timescales of bend evolution and abandonment in natural and numerically simulated meander belts. In both cases, a saturated state is achieved whereby oxbows are spaced ∼1 meander radius apart. At saturation, the distribution of floodplain ages and probability of sediment‐storage time can be constrained from characteristic timescales of bend evolution and abandonment. Owing to the similar relationships between floodplain width and characteristic timescales in natural and simulated rivers, we postulate that this approach should apply to unconfined meandering rivers elsewhere—a hypothesis to be tested with independent geo‐ or dendrochronological data.
Plain Language Summary
Meandering rivers have curvy channels characterized by erosion and deposition along their inner and outer banks, respectively. Over time, continued erosion and deposition shuffle sediment along the river plain, and lead to channel bends joining each other, through a process—called neck cutoff—that isolates a channel segment in between. These processes control the age of sediment and soil in a river plain over timespans much longer than human life, such that evolution models of meandering rivers often rely on numerical simulations. Here, data from both natural and simulated rivers show that, over time, neck cutoffs find themselves in closely spaced arrangements, and that their position can inform typical sediment ages once the river's characteristic pace of erosion and deposition are accounted for. These results may be tested in the future with direct age determination and, if corroborated, could further inform future studies on river organic‐carbon budgets.
Key Points
Natural and simulated river meander belts reach a saturated state whereby oxbows are arranged ∼1 meander radius away from each other
Distribution of floodplain sediment age is controlled by meander location, sizes, and channel migration rate
Natural and numerically simulated floodplains display similar relationships between their width and sediment‐age distribution
It is commonly accepted that crime scene recovery and recording are key moments of any judicial inspection in which investigators must decide on the correct strategies to put into place. Complex ...outdoor scenarios, presenting partially or entirely skeletonised remains, can benefit more than others by the intervention of environmental specialists (forensic anthropologists, archaeologists, entomologists and botanists). These experts are capable of singling out, correctly recording and recovering environmental evidence that can lead to a more comprehensive reconstruction of a given criminal episode. If human remains are discovered in an outdoor scenario, the on-site presence of a botanist will guarantee a correct approach to the identification, recording and recovery of any botanical evidence. If an on-site botanist is not available, the operators must be capable of both the botanical evaluation of a scene and the implementation of correct botanical sampling protocols.
The following collection of unusual case histories that aim at underlining the efficacy of forensic botany will examine the determination of post mortem or the post depositional interval, evidence for a victim’s post mortem transfer, evidence for the identification of a primary crime scene and evidence for the identification of a victim’s dismemberment site. In another two cases, one, we will illustrate the important role that forensic botany played in the discrimination between botanical material used to voluntarily conceal a victim and vegetation that had grown naturally above a disposal site, whereas the other will highlight the protocols implemented for the identification of a murder weapon.
Red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) was widely planted across the Great Lakes region of North America in the early 20th century to restore tree cover to degraded forest and agricultural lands. In this ...study, a dendrochronological assessment of radial growth response to climate was conducted in an 82-year-old, previously thinned red pine plantation forest in southern Ontario, Canada. Climate-growth relationships were analyzed at multi-monthly and annual time scales using a 72-year residual growth chronology (1942–2013). Warmer temperatures and periodic drought during the current and previous growing seasons were associated with decreased growth, while higher precipitation during the early part of the current growing season was associated with increased growth. Moving interval correlation analysis of long-term trends indicated that climate-growth relations were temporally unstable due to thinning and variation in climate over the length of the chronology. The correlation between climate and growth was stronger when stand density was relatively high and diminished in the two decades following thinning. These results indicate that growth of red pine plantations near the species’ southern range limit may be much reduced if exposed to a warmer, drier future climate and that periodic thinning can help mitigate the impacts of future climate change on these plantations.
On the prehistoric site of Ploča Mičov Grad (Ohrid, North Macedonia) on the eastern shore of Lake Ohrid a total of 799 wooden elements were recorded from a systematically excavated area of nearly 100 ...square metres. Most of them are pile remains made of round wood with diameters up to almost 40 cm. A comprehensive dendrochronological analysis allows the construction of numerous well-replicated tree-ring chronologies for different species. High agreements between the chronologies prove that oak, pine, juniper, ash and hop-hornbeam can be crossdated. The chronologies are dated by means of radiocarbon dates and modelling using wiggle matching. An intensive settlement phase is attested for the middle of the 5th millennium BCE. Further phases follow towards the end of the 5th millennium BCE and in the 2nd millennium around 1800, 1400 and 1300 BCE. Furthermore, the exact, relative felling dates allow first insights into the minimum duration of the settlement phases, which lie between 17 and 87 years. The multi-centennial chronologies presented in this study can be used as a first robust dating basis for future research in the numerous not yet dated prehistoric lake shore settlements of the region with excellently preserved wooden remains.
Tree masting is one of the most intensively studied ecological processes. It affects nutrient fluxes of trees, regeneration dynamics in forests, animal population densities, and ultimately influences ...ecosystem services. Despite a large volume of research focused on masting, its evolutionary ecology, spatial and temporal variability, and environmental drivers are still matter of debate. Understanding the proximate and ultimate causes of masting at broad spatial and temporal scales will enable us to predict tree reproductive strategies and their response to changing environment. Here we provide broad spatial (distribution range-wide) and temporal (century) masting data for the two main masting tree species in Europe, European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H. Karst.). We collected masting data from a total of 359 sources through an extensive literature review and from unpublished surveys. The data set has a total of 1,747 series and 18,348 yearly observations from 28 countries and covering a time span of years 1677–2016 and 1791–2016 for beech and spruce, respectively. For each record, the following information is available: identification code; species; year of observation; proxy of masting (flower, pollen, fruit, seed, dendrochronological reconstructions); statistical data type (ordinal, continuous); data value; unit of measurement (only in case of continuous data); geographical location (country, Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics NUTS-1 level, municipality, coordinates); first and last record year and related length; type of data source (field survey, peer reviewed scientific literature, gray literature, personal observation); source identification code; date when data were added to the database; comments. To provide a ready-to-use masting index we harmonized ordinal data into five classes. Furthermore, we computed an additional field where continuous series with length >4 yr where converted into a five classes ordinal index. To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive published database on species-specific masting behavior. It is useful to study spatial and temporal patterns of masting and its proximate and ultimate causes, to refine studies based on tree-ring chronologies, to understand dynamics of animal species and pests vectored by these animals affecting human health, and it may serve as calibration–validation data for dynamic forest models.
More than half of the forest area of the North German Lowlands is stocked with Scots pine-dominated forests, mostly plantations. Climate change suggests a declining suitability of Europe’s temperate ...zone for conifer plantations, but only a few studies have examined the long-term growth trends of Scots pine in relation to environmental and site factors in this region. We studied the radial growth patterns of Scots pine over the last 60 years at ten sites along a precipitation gradient (830–530 mm mean annual precipitation) from an oceanic to a subcontinental climate, analyzing the spatial and temporal variability of the climate sensitivity of growth to identify the main climatic factors influencing pine growth across this gradient, which covers a large part of the species’ tolerated precipitation range. Annual radial increment was sensitive to late-winter temperatures (February, March) and summer drought and heat (June–August), with sensitivity increasing from the oceanic to the drier continental sites. Warmer late-winter periods apparently have stimulated growth during the last decades, while the sensitivity to summer-drought has remained fairly stable. Until recently, the negative impact of warming summers on growth has been compensated by the positive effect of late-winter warming, resulting in stable (or increasing) growth trends. However, our comparison of the climate sensitivity across sites suggests that the drought effect compensation through winter warming will in future be limited by increasing drought exposure. Thus, future productivity declines are likely in the northern German lowlands despite warming winters, discouraging large-scale pine plantations in the face of climate warming.
Archival charcoal tree-ring segments from the Mississippian center of Kincaid Mounds provide chronometric information for the history of this important site. However, charcoal recovered from Kincaid ...was originally treated with a paraffin consolidant, a once common practice in American archaeology. This paper presents data on the efficacy of a solvent pretreatment protocol and new wiggle-matched 14C dates from the largest mound (Mound 10) at Kincaid. FTIR and 14C analysis on known-age charcoal intentionally contaminated with paraffin, as well as archaeological material, show that a chloroform pretreatment is effective at removing paraffin contamination. Wiggle-matched cutting dates from the final construction episodes on Mound 10 at Kincaid, indicate that the mound was used in the late 1300s with the construction of a unique structure on the apex occurring around 1390. This study demonstrates the potential for museum collections of archaeological charcoal to contribute high-resolution chronological information despite past conservation practices that complicate 14C dating.
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