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.
Poslední úprava: Kuneš Petr, doc. RNDr., Ph.D. (06.10.2025)
Literatura - angličtina
LANG, Gerhard, AMMANN, Brigitta, BEHRE, Karl-Ernst and TINNER, Willy, 2023. Quaternary Vegetation Dynamics of Europe. Haupt Verlag. ISBN 978-3-258-48214-9.
Poslední úprava: Kuneš Petr, doc. RNDr., Ph.D. (24.10.2025)
Sylabus - angličtina
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
Poslední úprava: Kuneš Petr, doc. RNDr., Ph.D. (17.09.2022)
Výsledky učení - angličtina
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.
Poslední úprava: Kuneš Petr, doc. RNDr., Ph.D. (29.01.2026)
