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This geoarchaeological survey was dedicated to (i) the Umm an-Nar (2700–2000 BCE) settlement site of Dahwa and surrounding areas in the foothills of the Hajar Mountains as well as (ii) the coastal area near Saham on the Batinah coastal plain in northern Oman, the latter without focus on a specific cultural epoch. Stratigraphic sections from the proximal coastal plain provide insights into highly dynamic episodic sedimentation patterns with thick units of variable grain sizes and sorting. In one of the stratigraphic profiles in the town of Saham, a small anthropogenic pit or channel was found, interpreted as a pit hearth used by the Samad culture (300 BCE–100/200 CE) based on granulometry, thin-section analysis, clustered macro-charcoals, amorphous organic remains, as well as luminescence and 14C dating. Our coincidental discovery of this site indicates that there might be abundant traces of the Samad culture buried in the thick alluvium, from a period of hydrologically favourable conditions c. 50–300 CE. The Umm an-Nar dating of the Dahwa archaeological site in the foothills of the Hajar Mountains was confirmed for the first time by luminescence dating, although the low dose rate and high scatter of equivalent doses pose substantial challenges to the regional application of this method.

Coastal lowlands and river deltas worldwide are increasingly exposed to coastal, pluvial and fluvial flooding as well as relative sea-level rise (RSLR). However, information about both single and multiple flood-type hazards, their potential impact and the characteristics of areas, population and assets at risk is often still limited as high-quality data either does not exist or is not accessible. This often constitutes a main barrier for generating sound assessments, especially for scientific and public communities in the so-called Global South. We provide a standardised, integrative approach for the first-order assessment of these single and multiple flood-type hazards and show how this can be conducted for data-sparse, hardly accessible and inaccessible coastal lowlands such as the Ayeyarwady Delta in Myanmar by using only open accessible and freely available datasets of satellite imagery, global precipitation estimates, satellite-based river discharge measurements, elevation, land use, and population data. More than 70% of the delta, mainly used for agriculture, and about 40% of its present population are prone to flooding due to either monsoon precipitation and runoff, storm surge, and RSLR, or their combination, jeopardising food security and economic development in the region. The approach allows for the integration and combination of various datasets, combined in a highly flexible workflow that performs at low computational capacities, supporting the evaluation of flood-prone areas on regional and local scale for data-sparse coastal lowlands worldwide. It thereby allows to attribute different types of flood hazards, complements concepts of vulnerability and risk, and supports risk-informed decision making and development of effective multi-flooding adaptation strategies.

The Holocene Humid Period in Northern Arabia may only have lasted for less than 1000 years and was characterised by substantial regional climatic variability, according to a high-resolution multi-proxy varved lake record from Tayma, Saudi Arabia.

The evolution of alluvial fans on the narrow coastal plain of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile is so far poorly investigated. Therefore, a detailed geomorphological map at a scale of 1:7500 of a coastal alluvial fan complex at Guanillos (21°58′S, 70°10.5′W) is provided as a first step to understand the fan’s morphogenesis. Geomorphological mapping was based on a digital elevation model with a resolution of 2 m generated from Pleiades-1 tri-stereo satellite imagery, derived terrain parameters, and on-site field mapping. The resultant map is used to characterize and categorize the overall morphology of the alluvial fan complex. In particular, linear features constructed by primary alluvial fan processes can be differentiated successfully from those developed by secondary processes. Furthermore, the advanced evolutionary state of the fan complex is revealed. We introduce a morphostratigraphic model comprising the fan’s prograde evolution, dissection, and successive abandonment of surface generations.

Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) dynamics significantly impact deltas, which are among the world’s most valuable but also vulnerable habitats. Non-risk-oriented LULCCs can act as disaster risk drivers by increasing levels of exposure and vulnerability or by reducing capacity. Making thematically detailed long-term LULCC data available is crucial to improving understanding of those dynamics interlinked at different spatiotemporal scales. For the Ayeyarwady Delta, one of the least studied mega-deltas, such comprehensive information is still lacking. This study used 50 Landsat and Sentinel-1A images spanning five decades from 1974 to 2021 in five-year intervals. A hybrid ensemble model consisting of six machine-learning classifiers was employed to generate land-cover maps from the images, achieving accuracies of about 90%. The major identified potential risk-relevant LULCC dynamics include urban growth towards low-lying areas, mangrove deforestation, and the expansion of irrigated agricultural areas and cultivated aquatic surfaces. The novel area-wide LULCC products achieved through the analyses provide a basis to support future risk-sensitive development decisions and can be used for regionally adapted disaster risk management plans and models. Developed with freely available data and open-source software, they hold great potential to increase research activity in the Ayeyarwady Delta and will be shared upon request.

Loess-paleosol sequences (LPSs) are important terrestrial archives of paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic information. One of the main obstacles for the investigation and interpretation of these archives is the uncertainty of their age-depth relationship. In this study, four different dating techniques were applied to the Late Pleistocene to Holocene LPS Balta Alba Kurgan (Romania) in order to achieve a robust chronology. Luminescence dating includes analysis of different grain-size fractions of both quartz and potassium feldspar and the best results are obtained using fine-grained quartz blue‐stimulated and polymineral post-infrared infrared-stimulated luminescence measurements. Radiocarbon (14C) dating is based on the analysis of bulk organic carbon (OC) and compound-specific radiocarbon analysis (CSRA). Bulk OC and leaf wax-derived n-alkane 14C ages provide reliable age constraints for the past c. 25–27 kyr. CSRA reveals post-depositional incorporation of roots and microbial OC into the LPS limiting the applicability of 14C dating in older parts of the sequence. Magnetic stratigraphy data reveal good correlation of magnetic susceptibility and the relative paleointensity of the Earth’s magnetic field with one another as well as reference records and regional data. In contrast, the application of paleomagnetic secular variation stratigraphy is limited by a lack of regional reference data. The identification of the Campanian Ignimbrite/Y-5 tephra layer in the outcrop provides an independent time marker against which results from the other dating methods have been tested. The most accurate age constraints from each method are used for two Bayesian age-depth modeling approaches. The systematic comparison of the individual results exemplifies the advantages and disadvantages of the respective methods. Taken as a whole, the two age-depth models agree very well, our study also demonstrates that the multi-method approach can improve the accuracy and precision of dating loess sequences.

Throughout mankind’s history, the need to secure and protect the home settlement was an essential one. This holds especially true for the city of Ainos (modern Enez) in Turkish Thrace. Due to its continuous settlement history since the 7th/6th century BC, several different types of city walls were built—sometimes even on top of each other—several of which have been preserved over time. To decipher the construction style, the course and the age of a buried city wall segment in the southern part of the former city, a geoscientific multi-proxy approach including magnetic gradiometer (MG) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) measurements in combination with granulometrical, sedimentological and microfaunistical investigations on sediment cores was applied. We were able to (1) present reasonable arguments for its Hellenistic age; (2) reveal the course of this wall segment and extrapolate it further north into a less studied area; and (3) demonstrate that in this near-coastal area, the former swampy terrain had been consolidated for constructing the wall. Our multi-proxy approach serves as a valuable example for investigating buried structures in archaeological contexts, avoiding a less-economical, time-consuming, or even forbidden excavation.

Barchan dune fields are a dominant landscape feature in SE Qatar and a key element of the peninsula’s geodiversity. The migration of barchan dunes is mainly controlled by dune size, wind patterns, vegetation cover and human impact. We investigate the variability of dune migration in Qatar over a time period of 50 years using high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery. We then explore its relation to the regional Shamal wind system, teleconnection patterns, and limitations in sand supply associated with the transgression of the Arabian Gulf. Strong size-dependent differences in migration rates of individual dunes as well as significant decadal variability on a dune-field scale are detected, which are found to correlate with the intensity of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM), in particular during years of relatively strong (weak) summer Shamals. High uncertainties associated with the extrapolation of migration rates back into the Holocene, however, do not permit further examination of the timing of the loss of sand supply and the onset of the mid-Holocene relative sea-level (RSL) highstand. For the youngest phase considered in this study (2006–2015), human impact has likely accelerated dune migration under a weakening Shamal regime through sand mining and excessive vehicle traffic upwind of the core study area.

INTERACT is an international research and innovation project which boosts the emergence of Energy Communities as one crucial building block to achieve Positive Energy Districts. It is designing an optimal organization and structure for Energy Communities based on success-factors of existing PED/PEN approaches, stakeholder needs and motivation, the available technologies, and a holistic LINK-based architecture. Technological and market-related solutions are delivered that maximize the benefit for the environment and society, considering the current legal framework and available business models. The project will develop a roadmap for the Energy Community's secure and reliable embedding into the power system structure, focusing on two pilot regions, a green-field project in Sweden and an~existing municipality in Austria. The holistic architecture is used to ensure the integrity of the solution by harmonizing all interactions within the Energy Community itself, between it and the market, and the European power system. Its standardized and flexible structure allows the straightforward application of the roadmap to perfectly meet the diverse necessities of local communities, thus supporting the large-scale roll-out of the new control paradigms.

The EU policymakers have adopted legislation to support communities taking responsibility for the energy transition. However, their development and integration are still in their early stages: many studies are performed without considering the overlapped social, economic, political, electrical, and information technology tasks simultaneously. This paper is the first to look at energy communities in their entirety, from the roles of the actors to the organisation, regulation, technical solution, and the market, to the use and business cases. The waterfall methodology was used throughout the work. The results show that energy communities can be viable by becoming reliable players so DSOs can better integrate the acquired flexibility and other services into their processes without compromising power supply. Their technical integration requires a coordinated operation and control of the entire power grid, including transmission and distribution, and the end-users, as proposed by the LINK holistic solution. The suggested fractal-based market structure, with the national, regional and local markets harmonised with the grid, facilitates the direct participation of small customers and distributed resources to the energy market. The results of this work may help policymakers, regulators, and industry representatives define new energy policies and processes related to research and development programs for implementing fully integrated renewable energy communities.

There is only sparse information on the metal contamination of agricultural soils in the former Soviet Union and the development of impacts during the process of transformation to a private structure of production. In this study a first overview on the metal load (Pb, Zn, Cu, Cr, Mn) of agricultural soils in central and eastern regions of Georgia is given using 251 subsamples from 106 profiles on 37 plots. While the data sets for lead (Pb) and chromium (Cr) are rather homogeneous and range only within narrow limits, the contents of zinc (Zn) and copper (Cu) vary much more. Additionally, manganese (Mn) was tested. Here the data vary largely, which is probably due to the natural soil loads. Very low loads for all investigated metals are typical for communally used pastures (Allmende) and especially for a biologically managed farm. On the contrary, Cu loads frequently exceed the median by more than five to ten times (the maximum value is 1023 mg kg−1) in vineyards. The comparison of complete soil profiles proves that this is due to the application of copper sulphate for pest control. In the Bolnisi region south of Tbilisi extremely high loads in the upper soil horizons are found not only for Cu, but for Zn as well, ranging up to 794 mg kg−1. Compared to all other data, the loads for Pb and Cr are also high in several samples. Cu, Zn and Pb are significantly correlated to one another in the Bolnisi region. This striking situation most probably results from the frequent irrigation of the plots by industrially contaminated water from the Mashawera River. Due to economic deficiencies the application of chemicals in Georgian agriculture has dropped heavily since 1990. Consequently, the metal contamination of agricultural soils in general is rather low, being far below western European tolerance limits. Intensive pasturing might even cause values close to the natural loads due to erosion and/or the export by the way of plants and livestock. On the other hand, some specific types of land use cause serious environmental problems. This is especially true for vineyards and plots that are irrigated with contaminated water. Overgrazed plots tend to soil erosion. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]