Practical class in Quaternary Palaeoecology - MB120P21

• Title: Practical class in Quaternary Palaeoecology
• Czech title: Paleoekologické praktikum
• Guaranteed by: Department of Botany (31-120)
• Faculty: Faculty of Science
• Actual: from 2025
• Semester: winter
• E-Credits: 3
• Examination process: winter s.:
• Hours per week, examination: winter s.:0/3, MC [HT]
• Capacity: unlimited
• Min. number of students: 4
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Explanation: 21/22 změna hodinové dotace
• Note: enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: doc. RNDr. Petr Kuneš, Ph.D.
• Teacher(s): RNDr. Vojtěch Abraham, Ph.D.; doc. RNDr. Petr Kuneš, Ph.D.; Mgr. Adéla Pokorná, Ph.D.; Mgr. Martin Prach
• Class: Digestoř pro karyologii/palynologii s odtahem; Původní předmět

Annotation

This course explores practical aspects of quaternary paleoecology, aiming to understand long-term ecosystem changes and their relevance to contemporary environmental issues. Through hands-on field and lab work, students will analyze pollen, seeds, and sedimentary charcoal to reconstruct past ecosystems, fire dynamics, and human-environment interactions and link these dynamics to climate change. By linking historical changes—caused by climate or human activity—to modern ecological challenges, the course provides insights into predicting future species and ecosystem behaviors.

Last update: Kuneš Petr, doc. RNDr., Ph.D. (06.10.2025)

Literature

LANG, Gerhard, AMMANN, Brigitta, BEHRE, Karl-Ernst and TINNER, Willy, 2023. Quaternary Vegetation Dynamics of Europe. Haupt Verlag. ISBN 978-3-258-48214-9.

Last update: Kuneš Petr, doc. RNDr., Ph.D. (24.10.2025)

Syllabus

Course plan

Lesson	Topic
1	Introduction to long time scales
2	Climate change and large scale ecosystem change
3	Excursion
4	Humans and environmental change
5	Disturbances
6	Local vegetation reconstruction
7	Pollen determinations
8	Seed - fruit determination
9	Charcoal and fire
10	Multi-proxy data collection
11	Palaeoecological synthesis
12	Conclusions: project completion and Future Earth

Last update: Kuneš Petr, doc. RNDr., Ph.D. (17.09.2022)

Learning outcomes

Knowledge and understanding

• Participants will explain the main drivers of long-term ecosystem change during the Quaternary, including climate, human impact, and succession, and relate these to key stages of the Quaternary, especially the Holocene.
• Participants will recognize the most important subfossil palaeoecological remains (pollen, seeds/fruits, sedimentary charcoal) and describe their significance for reconstructing past environments, vegetation, and fire regimes.

Field and laboratory skills

• Participants will identify a suitable locality for palaeoecological sampling, apply basic coring techniques, and describe sediment types using standard schemes (e.g. Troels-Smith).
• Participants will carry out basic laboratory procedures to process sediments, including wet sieving, separation, and preparation of samples for pollen, macroremains, and charcoal analysis.
• Participants will use microscopes and reference collections to identify common local pollen types and selected plant macroremains (seeds/fruits) to an appropriate taxonomic level for ecological interpretation.
• Participants will quantify selected proxies (e.g. pollen counts, charcoal particles, macroremain presence/abundance) and record data in a form suitable for further analysis and archiving.

Data interpretation and reconstruction

• Participants will construct simple diagrams (e.g. pollen and charcoal profiles) from their own data and identify major changes in local vegetation, fire activity, and human impact through time.
• Participants will interpret relationships among different proxy groups (pollen, macroremains, charcoal) and evaluate their combined significance for reconstructing local and regional environments.
• Participants will place their site-based reconstructions into a broader Quaternary and Holocene context and discuss how local records relate to larger-scale ecosystem and climate dynamics.

Research design and communication

• Participants will formulate simple, realistic research questions in Quaternary palaeoecology, design a small-scale project using field and laboratory methods taught in the course, and outline how their data address these questions.
• Participants will present their project results (data, diagrams, interpretation) to peers, respond to questions, and reflect on methodological limitations and possible improvements in future work.

Last update: Kuneš Petr, doc. RNDr., Ph.D. (29.01.2026)