Interplay of climate, human impact, and land erosion recorded in the natural archives of Strážnické Pomoraví

Name of the project: Interplay of climate, human impact, and land erosion recorded in the natural archives of Strážnické Pomoraví (Czech Republic)

Provider: The Grant Agency of AS CR

Duration: 2008-2011

Applicant: RNDr. Jaroslav Kadlec, Ph.D. (Geologický ústav AV ČR, v. v. i., Praha)

Joint applicants: PhDr. Helena Svitavská-Svobodová, CSc. (Botanický ústav AV ČR, v. v. i., Průhonice), RNDr. Tomáš Grygar, CSc. (Ústav anorganické chemie AV ČR, v. v. i., Řež), Ing. Ivo Světlík (Ústav jaderné fyziky AV ČR, v. v. i., Řež),
Prof. RNDr. Rudolf Brázdil, DrSc. (Geografický ústav PřF MU, Brno), Ing. Vojtěch Beneš (G IMPULS Praha spol. s r. o.)

CO-workers: doc. RNDr. Petr Dobrovolný, CSc., Mgr. Zdeněk Máčka, Ph.D. (Geografický ústav PřF MU, Brno)

Characteristics of the project:

The proposed project is focused on a detailed record of waterborne and aeolian erosions in Strážnické Pomoraví on the lower reach of Morava River in the Holocene, in particular in the last millennium. The main aim is to estimate how the erosion was affected by natural and anthropogenic factors during the fall of the Great Moravian Empire, during Mediaeval colonization, and in the current extensive agricultural land use. Erosion processes recorded in the flood and aeolian sediments will be reconstructed using sedimentological, geophysical, mineralogical, and geochemical means and pollen analysis, supplemented by (14)C, dendrochronological, and OSL dating. The results will be compared with the historical records on the land use and historical-climatologic information on extreme windstorms and flood events. Reconstruction of the Holocene landscape evolution will be confronted with the recent dynamics of geomorphological (fluvial) processes. The targeted multidisciplinary study of that natural archive completed by historical data will permit reconstruction of the climate evolution in Central Europe in the last millennium.