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During European states’ development, various past societies utilized natural resources, but their impact was not uniformly spatially and temporally distributed. Considerable changes resulted in landscape fragmentation, especially during the Middle Ages. Changes in state advances that affected the local economy significantly drove the trajectories of ecosystems’ development. The legacy of significant changes from pristine forests to farming is visible in natural archives as novel ecosystems. Here, we present two high‑resolution, densely dated multi‑proxy studies covering the last 1000 years from peatlands in CE Europe. In that case, the economic activity of medieval societies was related to the emerging Polish state and new rulers, the Piasts (in Greater Poland) and the Joannites (the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller). Our research revealed rapid deforestation and subsequent critical land-use transition in the high and late Middle Ages and its consequences on the peatland ecosystem development. The shift from the old-growth forests correlates well with raising the local economy, deforestation and enhanced peat initiation. Along with the emerging landscape openness, the wetlands switched from wet fen with open water to terrestrial habitats. Both sites possess a different timing of the shift, but they also show that the catchment deforestation caused accelerated terrestrialization. Our data show how closely the ecological state of wetlands relates to forest microclimate. We identified a significant impact of economic development and the onset of intensive agriculture processes near the study sites. Our results revealed a surprisingly fast rate at which the feudal economy eliminated pristine nature from the studied area and led to intensive nature exploitation in the Anthropocene. In consequence, its activities led to the creation of novel peatlands types.

As peatlands are a major terrestrial sink in the global carbon cycle, gaining understanding of their development and changes throughout time is essential to predict their future carbon budget and potentially mitigate negative influences of climate change. With this aim to understand peat development, many studies have investigated the paleoecological dynamics through the analysis of various proxies, including pollen, macrofossil, elemental, and biomarker analyses. However, as each of these proxies are known to have their own benefits and limitations, examining them in parallel potentially allows for a deeper understanding of these paleoecological dynamics at the peatland and for a systematic comparison of the power of these individual proxies. In this study, we therefore analyzed soil cores from a peatland in Germany (Beerberg, Thuringia) to a) characterize the vegetation dynamics over the course of the peatland development during the late Holocene and b) evaluate to what extent the inclusion of multiple proxies, specifically pollen, macrofossil, and biomarkers, contributes to a deeper understanding of those dynamics and interaction among factors. We found that, despite a major shift in regional forest composition from primarily beech to spruce as well as many indicators of human impact in the region, the local plant population in the Beerberg area remained stable over time following the initial phase of peatland development up until the last couple of centuries. Therefore, little variation could be derived from the paleobotanical data alone. The combination of pollen and macrofossil analyses with the elemental and biomarker analyses enabled further understanding of the site development as these proxies added valuable additional information including the occurrence of climatic variations, such as the Little Ice Age, and more recent disturbances such as drainage and dust deposition.

In the time of the global climate crisis, it is vital to protect and restore peatlands to maintain their functioning as carbon sinks. Otherwise, their transformations may trigger a shift to a carbon source state and further contribute to global warming. In this study, we focused on eutrophication, which resulted in its transition from rich fen to poor fen conditions. The prior aim was to decipher how i) climate, ii) human, and iii) autogenic processes influenced the pathway of peatland changes in the last ca. 250 years. We applied a high-resolution palaeoecological analysis, based mainly on testate amoebae (TA) and plant macroremains. Our results imply that before ca. 1950 CE, dry shifts on the Kazanie fen were generally climate-induced. Later, autogenic processes, human pressure and climate warming synergistically affected the fen, contributing to its transition to poor fen within ca. 30 years. Its establishment not only caused changes in vegetation but also altered TA taxonomic content and resulted in a lower diversity of TA. According to our research M. patella is an incredibly sensitive testate amoeba that after ca. 200 years of presence, disappeared within 2 years due to changes in water and nutrient conditions. As a whole, our study provides a long-term background that is desired in modern conservation studies and might be used to define future restoration targets. It also confirms the already described negative consequences connected with the Anthropocene and not sustainable exploitation of nature. 1. Introduction 2. Material and methods 2.1. State of art 2.1.1. Study site 2.1.2. Core retrieval and chronology 2.1.3. Plant macrofossils 2.2. Testate amoebae (TA) 2.3. Statistical analyses and visualization 3. Results and interpretation 3.1. Mire succession: plant macrofossils, testate amoebae, water table and conductivity 3.1.1. Phase I — rich fen; 91–35.5 cm; ca. 1767 ± 45–1982 ± 3 CE 3.1.2. Phase II — poor fen; 35.5–0 cm; ca. 1982 ± 3–2017 CE 3.2. Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) 4. Discussion 4.1. An abrupt rich to poor fen transition — causes of change 4.2. Quality of testate amoebae indicators of the rich-poor fen transformation 5. Conclusions

Peatlands are an important ecosystem for many reasons, including their function as carbon sinks essential for mitigating climate change. Additionally, due to the anaerobic conditions in which peatlands form, decomposition of their constituent plant material is inhibited, making peatlands valuable archives for paleoenvironmental reconstructions. In this study, we examined a new 3.4 m core from the ombrotrophic Beerberg peatland located in the Vessertal-Thuringian Forest Biosphere Reserve in Germany. While paleo-archives at this peatland have been studied in the past (e.g., Jahn, 1930; Lange, 1967), we aim to apply newer techniques at a higher resolution to obtain more detailed results. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the core spans approximately the last 2500 years. Samples from the core were analyzed for pollen, macrofossils, and biomarkers, in particular, free extractable lipids including n-alkanes, n-alcohols, and n-fatty acids. These proxy data were used both to perform a vegetation reconstruction as well as to compare the results of the different proxies to each other to determine accuracy as well as create a more complete picture of the environment over time at the Beerberg peatland. The current dominant vegetation at the moor are Sphagnum mosses as well as Calluna vulgaris. Additionally, Eriophorum vaginatum, Empetrum nigrum, Oxycoccus palustris, and various Vaccinium species were abundant. Preliminary results from the macrofossil and pollen analyses indicate thatthrough time, the peatland has been primarily dominated by Sphagnum mosses, particularly Sphagnum fuscum. However, there are also conflicting results of when transitions to other dominant vegetation, such as Eriophorum vaginatum, occurred, as well as the contributions of species, such as Calluna vulgaris, over time. We aim to clarify these results through the addition of the biomarker analysis to develop a robust picture of evolution of vegetation during the Holocene at Beerberg peatland. Data from this study will also be used to improve a future iteration of the VERHIB (VEgetation Reconstruction with the Help of Inverse modeling and Biomarkers) model (Jansen et al., 2010).References:Jahn, R. (1930). Pollenanalytische Untersuchungen an Hochmooren des Thüringer Waldes. Forstwissenschaftliches Centralblatt, 52, 761-774.Jansen, B., van Loon, E. E., Hooghiemstra, H., & Verstraten, J. M. (2010). Improved reconstruction of palaeo-environments through unravelling of preserved vegetation biomarker patterns. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 285(1-2), 119-130.Lange, E. (1967). Zur Vegetationsgeschichte des Beerberggebietes im Thüringer Wald. Feddes Repertorium, 76(3), 205-219.

This research has been supported by the Leverhulme Trust (grant no. RC-2018-023), the European Research Council (grant no. 694481), the German Research Foundation (grant no. FE-1096/6-1), the Swiss Government Excellence Postdoctoral Scholarships (grant no. FIRECO 2016.0310), the National Science Centre of Poland (grant no. 2015/17/B/ST10/01656), the SCIEX Scholarship Fund (grant no. PSPB-013/2010), and the Estonian Research Council (grant no. MOBJD313)., Sedimentary charcoal records are widely used to reconstruct regional changes in fire regimes through time in the geological past. Existing global compilations are not geographically comprehensive and do not provide consistent metadata for all sites. Furthermore, the age models provided for these records are not harmonised and many are based on older calibrations of the radiocarbon ages. These issues limit the use of existing compilations for research into past fire regimes. Here, we present an expanded database of charcoal records, accompanied by new age models based on recalibration of radiocarbon ages using IntCal20 and Bayesian age-modelling software. We document the structure and contents of the database, the construction of the age models, and the quality control measures applied. We also record the expansion of geographical coverage relative to previous charcoal compilations and the expansion of metadata that can be used to inform analyses. This first version of the Reading Palaeofire Database contains 1676 records (entities) from 1480 sites worldwide. The database (RPDv1b – Harrison et al., 2021) is available at https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.000345., Leverhulme Trust RC-2018-023, European Research Council (ERC) European Commission 694481, German Research Foundation (DFG) FE-1096/6-1, Swiss Government Excellence Postdoctoral Scholarships FIRECO 2016.0310, SCIEX Scholarship Fund PSPB-013/2010, Estonian Research Council MOBJD313

This article presents a reconstruction of Late Holocene vegetation changes within the lower montane forest zone in the Beskid Wyspowy Mountains (Western Carpathians, Central Europe). Pollen, non-po...

Sedimentary charcoal records are widely used to reconstruct regional changes in fire regimes through time in the geological past. Existing global compilations are not geographically comprehensive and do not provide consistent metadata for all sites. Furthermore, the age models provided for these records are not harmonised and many are based on older calibrations of the radiocarbon ages. These issues limit the use of existing compilations for research into past fire regimes. Here, we present an expanded database of charcoal records, accompanied by new age models based on recalibration of radiocarbon ages using INTCAL2020 and Bayesian age-modelling software. We document the structure and contents of the database, the construction of the age models, and the quality control measures applied. We also record the expansion of geographical coverage relative to previous charcoal compilations and the expansion of metadata that can be used to inform analyses. This first version of the Reading Palaeofire Database contains 1681 records (entities) from 1477 sites worldwide. The database (DOI: 10.17864/1947.319) is available from https://researchdata.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/319.

The Black Death is the most reknown pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe's population. However, despite the advances in ancient DNA research that allowed for the successful identification of the pandemic's causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death is still limited, based primarily on medieval texts available for single areas of Western Europe. In our study we remedy this situation and we focus in particular on the scale of the Black Death mortality. We collected data on landscape change from 261 coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located in 19 European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that half of the population died within a single year in each of the 21 regions we studied. We discovered that while the Black Death had devastating impact in some regions, it had negligible or no impact in others. The inter-regional differences in the Black Death mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic and climatic factors that mediate the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the identification of the pathogen that caused disease outbreaks, should be the focus of future research on historical pandemics.

Palinologia

We explored the past environmental history inferred from a fen located in northwestern Poland, in a historically important location. Pollen, plant macrofossils, micro- and macrocharcoal particles, and non-pollen palynomorphs were analyzed continuously in a 1-cm resolution, supplemented with archeological data and historical written sources. The last 1200-year environmental history of the fen was supported with accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon (14C) dating (19 dates per 172 cm of the profile) and validated by 59 210 Pb dates. Our research showed that primeval oak–hornbeam forests near the Kazanie mire disappeared gradually, starting from 1035 ± 20 cal. yr CE, due to the economic development of the newly formed Polish (Piast) statehood. The pollen data revealed no shortage of oak timber during the 11th century, as recorded by previous studies in the area between Poznan and Gniezno. The Czech invasion in 1039 CE, which was associated with mass depopulation and domestic crisis, seemed to be manifested by the increase of pioneer Betula taking advantage of weaker human impact. Substantial land-use changes started with the further development of Polish statehood between the 15th and the 16th century CE, as reflected by cultivated land, ruderal, and meadow and pasture pollen indicators, as well as the rise of microcharcoal influx. The economy of Poland was disrupted by a noticeable socioeconomic collapse in the 17th century CE, which caused depopulation (by approximately 67.5%) and a decline in arable land (by 35%). Paleoecological data reflect this socio-environmental crisis with a decrease in all anthropogenic indicators, rapid forest regeneration, and secondary succession of pine on the abandoned land. According to palynological data, rapid landscape transformation due to agricultural reforms and industrialization commenced in the 19th century CE and was associated with the expansion of pastures, meadows, and arable lands. The following rapid decrease of cultivated land pollen indicators in 1940 ± 10 cal. yr CE is linked with the economic collapse after World War II and/or the implementation of new crops which produce less pollen.

Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie potencjału interdyscyplinarnych badań nad wpływem człowieka na środowisko w przeszłości na przykładzie Wielkopolski. Zostaną w nim wykorzystane wysokorozdzielcze analizy paleoekologiczne źródeł przyrodniczych wydobytych z torfowiska Kazanie oraz materiały archeologiczne i historyczne obrazujące osadnictwo i aktywność gospodarczą mieszkańców Pobiedzisk i okolicznych wsi w ciągu ostatnich 1200 lat. The aim of the article is to present the potential of interdisciplinary research on the human impact on the environment in the past on theexample of a site in Greater Poland (Wielko-polska). It uses high-resolution palaeoecological analyses of peat archives from the Kazanie peat bog as well as archaeological and historical materi-als refl ecting the settlement and economic activity of the inhabitants of Pobiedziska and surrounding villages throughout last 1200 years.