Eckfeld Maar:Window into an Eocene Terrestrial Habitat in Central Europe

To mark the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the Rheinische Naturforschende Gesellschaft in 2009 and of the centennial of the Mainz Natural History Museum in 2010, we present a short account of our present knowledge of the Eckfeld Maar after 20 years of continuous research. This paper does not attempt to include all of the detailed results on the geology of the Eckfeld site or its biota. To date, nearly 250 papers and books have been published since the start of our project. An up-to-date list of these publications can be found at www.eckfeldermaar.de.

What Happens after the Gap?— Size Distributions of Patches with Homogeneously Sized Trees in Natural and Managed Beech Forests in Europe

A novel but simple approach for describing stand structure in natural and managed forests driven by small-scaled disturbances is introduced. A primeval beech forest reserve in Slovakia and two beech stands in Germany with different management histories were studied, and their forest stand texture was analysed in terms of tree coordinates, stem diameter, and crown radius. Neigh-bouring trees of similar size with estimated contact of their crowns were assigned to tree groups. The study goal was to estimate the number and size of such homogeneous patches. In all cases, the number of tree groups in a particular diameter class decreased exponentially as group size increased. Single trees were predominant. Compared to simulated random tree distributions, the natural stand exhibited a more clumped distribution of small trees and more regular distribution of larger ones. The natural forest generally had smaller groups than the managed even aged stand, but the smallest group sizes were found in the uneven-aged selection forest. The simple analytical approach provided new spatial insights into neighbourhood relations of trees. The continuous scale from single trees to larger tree groups is an important achievement compared to other analytical methods applied in this field. The findings may even indicate a certain degree of self-organization in natural forests. Due to the limitations associated with each method or statistical models, a joint consideration of 1) gap dynamics, 2) forest developmental stages, and 3) size classes of homogeneous tree groups is recommended. Relevant to forest practitioners, the size class distributions enhance an understanding of the complex stand structures in natural forests and therewith support an emulation of natural forest dynamics in managed beech forests.

Is a correlation‑based investment strategy beneficial for long‑term international portfolio investors?

Using negative to low-correlated assets to manage short-term portfolio risk is not uncommon among investors,although the long-term benefits of this strategy remain unclear.This study examines the long-term benefits of the correlation strategy for portfolios based on the stock market in Asia,Central and Eastern Europe,the Middle East and North Africa,and Latin America from 2000 to 2016.Our strategy is as follows.We develop five portfolios based on the average unconditional correlation between domestic and foreign assets from 2000 to 2016.This yields five regional portfolios based on low to high correlations.In the presence of selected economic and financial conditions,long-term diversification gains for each regional portfolio are evaluated using a panel cointegration-based testing method.Consistent across all portfolios and regions,our key cointegration results suggest that selecting a low-correlated portfolio to maximize diversification gains does not necessarily result in long-term diversification gains.Our empirical method,which also permits the estimation of cointegrating regressions,provides the opportunity to evaluate the impact of oil prices,U.S.stock market fluctuations,and investor sentiments on regional portfolios,as well as to hedge against these fluctuations.Finally,we extend our data to cover the years 2017–2022 and find that our main findings are robust.

Nesting Orientalisms:Case of Hungary,Its Imaginary Occidentalisation Process,and Inconsistencies

What is the border between Central and Eastern Europe?This is an unanswered question in the literature of contemporary European history and politics.In the modern state system,imaginary boundaries are products of the imagined communities,and these boundaries also cause either to occidentalize or to orientalize the lands due to its top-down/elitist imagination procedure.During the Cold War years,anti-USSR voices are important to see the certain demand for Europeanization among people in today’s Central Europe where there especially had the communist legacy.In general,the ultimate goal is to identify themselves as more western among Central and Eastern European states for the sake of civilizational values of the Enlightenment and to reach today’s contested Neoliberal welfare.This desire causes Nesting Orientalisms,Milica Bakic-Hayden’s concept.Nesting Orientalisms are about re-constructing new Orient in the same region to hierarchizeitself as occidental.Through the process of mapping its location and construction of occidental identity,Hungary defines itself as a part of Central Europe.But what are the legitimated reasons of Hungary to define itself as Central European instead of Eastern Europe?Do these reasons perfectly fit in today’s Central European formulation and stereotype?What are the possible reasons to reject Hungary’s Central European self-definition?Moreover,under the shadow of the discussion on Central Europe vs.Eastern Europe,to what extent does the rise of authoritarianism block ongoing occidentalisation process of Hungary?In this research,I will answer these questions by analyzing modern political history of Hungary by the method of interpretivist process tracing.

Sustainability policy considerations for ecosystem management in Central and Eastern Europe

Here I discuss Central and Eastern European(CEE)countries as a region undergoing rapid change,resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union and admission of some of the states into the European Union.These events brought changes in governance and ecosystem management,triggering impacts on land use and biodiversity.What are some of the policy options toward sustainability in the face of these political,governance,and socioeconomic changes?Some policy considerations for ecosystem management and sustainability include taking a social-ecological systems approach to integrate biophysical subsystems and social subsystems;paying attention to institutions relevant to shared resources(commons)management;and using resilience theory to study change and guidance for governance.Documented experience in CEE seems to indicate shortcomings for both the centralized state management option and the purely market-driven option for ecosystem management.If so,a“smart mix”of state regulations,market incentives,and self-governance using local commons institutions may be the most promising policy option to foster ecosystem stewardship at multiple levels from local to international.

Trends in the indices of precipitation phases under current warming in Poland,1966e2020

In Poland the phase in which precipitation occurs impacts the availability of water in its reservoirs,the potential for hydrological droughts,snowfall flooding and winter recreation.The influence of warming on the occurrence of precipitation phases on the Polish scale has not been studied so far.Based on data from 42 synoptic stations for the period 1966-2020,this study discusses trends in the indices of liquid(Lq),mixed(Mx)and solid(Sd)precipitation describing their totals(T),frequencies(Nd)and contribution to overall precipitation totals(T%)and a number of days with overall precipitation(Nd%)from a seasonal perspective.Moreover,the influence of seasonal and daily air temperatures on longterm variability in the precipitation phase indices was assessed.The precipitation phase was discriminated based on the observations of weather phenomena noted as current and past weather considering days with precipitation
0.1 mm.Precipitation phases significantly reacted to current warming.The strongest and widespread were increasing trends in rains(+1.74 for LqNd,+5.35 mm for LqT,+3.51%for LqNd%,+4.08%for LqT%per decade)and decreasing trends in snowfalls(-1.92 for SdNd,-3.12 mm for SdT,-3.65%for SdNd%,-3.26%for SdT%per decade)in winter when the warming was weakest but average temperature was close to freezing point.In winter,air temperature explained 60%e80%of the variance in the frequency of snowfall and rainfall.Daily air temperature>-2℃ contributed to trends in winter rainfall while daily air temperature>1C most contributed to trends in winter snowfall.No trends in winter mixed precipitation were due to opposite changes in its frequency above and below 1℃.In spring,the increase in a liquid phase was due more to the melting of a solid and mixed phase,while in autumn,it was due more to the transformation of a mixed phase into a liquid phase.In spring,air temperature explained at most 30%-50%of the variance in the indices of snowfall frequency.Negative trends in mixed precipitation were significant in transitional seasons,being more prominent in spring than in autumn and were mostly driven by changes in daily air temperatures between 0 and 5℃.A diminished percentage of summer rains on days with air temperatures below 15℃ was compensated by their increase above that threshold thus producing no long-term trends.Warming significantly weakened the relationships between precipitation phases and average seasonal air temperatures except for summer rainfalls.

Demise of the Jablonna Reef(Zechstein Limestone)and the onset of gypsum deposition(Wuchiapingian,west Poland):carbonate-to-evaporite transition in a saline giant

Microbial deposits commonly occur at the transition between carbonate and sulphate facies,and they also abound in the uppermost part of the middle Wuchiapingian Zechstein Limestone in west Poland.These deposits occur as isolated reefs of the basinal zone and in the condensed sequences in most parts of the study area.The deposits of the latter category reflect evaporative drawdown,and the abrupt boundary between the carbonate and sulphate deposits in the basin suggests the nature of evaporites that start to precipitate as soon as they reach the saturation level.A few-metre-thick unit of mostly brecciated microbial deposits at the top,reefal portion of the Zechstein Limestone records extreme palaeoenvironmental events that occurred at the transition from carbonate to sulphate deposition.These events are related first to subaerial exposure of the reef,which lasted several 10~5 years and then to the Lower Anhydrite transgression.

Abandonment of croplands: problem or chance for grassland restoration? Case studies from Hungary

In Central-and Eastern Europe,the collapse of socialist regimes resulted in a transformation of state-owned agricultural cooperatives to privately owned lands from the early 1990s onwards.These socioeconomic processes resulted in landscape-scale changes in biodiversity,ecosystem services and agricultural production.In parallel,large-scale abandonment of croplands,especially on sandy,salty or fre-quently inundated areas,became common.Abandoned croplands are usually sensitive to species invasions,and are hotspots of noxious weeds,posing threats both to agriculture and nature conservation.Grassland restoration on former croplands can be an effective strategy for suppressing these species.Thus,a common goal of nature conservation and agriculture can be the restoration of grasslands on former croplands to(1)suppress weed and/or invasive species in line with the EU policy“Good Farming Practices”,(2)support animal husbandry by creating meadows or pastures,and to(3)recover biodiversity and ecosystem services.In the present paper we report“best practices”of grassland restoration projects from Hungary.Our aim was to compare the effectiveness of spontaneous grassland recovery vs.active grassland restoration by seed sowing in terms of the recovery of biodiversity and ecosystem services,such as weed control and biomass production.Our results showed that grassland restoration on abandoned fields offers a viable solution for restoring biodiversity and ecosystem services.Seed sowing ensures higher weed control and biomass pro-duction,but results in lower biodiversity compared to spontaneous recovery.Both restoration methods can be cost-effective,or even profitable even within a relatively short period of a nature conservation project.

It is time to change land use and landscape management in the Czech Republic

The identity of man-made landscapes is based on the balance among their ecological,cultural,and economic dimensions.Since the 1950s,short-term economic benefits have globally often outweighed long-term interests.This results in decreased landscape quality manifested as increased erosion of agricultural land,decreased water retention capacity,increased landscape uniformity,and loss of biodiversity.A new phenomenon influencing the condition of man-made landscapes is climate change.Extreme fluctuations of temperature and precipitation have been causing repeated floods and also periods of drought in Europe.Landscapes damaged by inappropriate management are unable to offset these impacts.It is necessary to stop this development by changing land use and management methods to restore the balance among landscape functions.For the Czech Republic,we propose to develop a long-term landscape vision and to formulate a responsible landscape policy with regional strategic goals,including subsidies and penalties(carrots and sticks),based on the principles of the European Landscape Convention.To promote ecological stability,we recommend allocating funds from the Common Agricultural Policy to both the restoration and maintenance of valuable habitats.Landscape research and management(based on habitat/species monitoring in cooperation with stakeholders)must be strengthened in order to play a proper role in the transformation.It is time for clear communication with the public and the training of state officials and land users in spatial and landscape planning.To fill this gap in interdisciplinary cooperation,we call for the establishment of a platform on sustainable landscape management in the Czech Republic.

Socioecological drivers facilitating biodiversity conservation in traditional farming landscapes

Traditional farming landscapes have evolved as tightly coupled socioecological systems that support high biodiversity.However,land-use change severely threatens the high biodiversity of these landscapes.Navigating nature conservation in such landscapes requires a thorough understanding of the key drivers underpinning biodiversity.Through empirical research on mammals,birds,butterflies,and plants in a traditional cultural landscape in Romania,we revealed seven hypothesized drivers facilitating biodiversity conservation.Similar proportions of three main land-use types support the landscape species pool,most likely through habitat connectivity and frequent spillover between land-use types.Landscape complementation and supplementation provide additional habitat for species outside their core habitats.Gradients of woody vegetation cover and gradients in land-cover heterogeneity provide mosaic landscapes with wide ranges of resources.Traditional land-use practices underpin landscape heterogeneity,traditional land-use elements such as wood pastures,and human-carnivore coexistence.Top-down predator control may limit herbivore populations.Lastly,cultural ties between humans and nature have a central influence on people’s values and sustainable use of natural resources.Conservation approaches should aim to maintain or restore these socioecological drivers by targeting the heterogeneous character of the forest-farmland mosaic at large scales through"broad and shallow"conservation measures.These large-scale measures should be complemented with"deep and narrow"conservation measures addressing specific land-use types,threats,or species.In both cases,conservation measures should integrate the entire socioecological system,by recognizing and strengthening important links between people and the environment.

Assessing impact of land use and climate change on regulating ecosystem services in the Czech Republic

Ecosystem services,defined as benefits provided by ecosystem functioning to society,are essential to human well-being.Due to global environmental change and related anthropogenic drivers,ecosystems are often degraded,which hinders the delivery of ecosystem services.This study aims to quantify the impacts of land use and climate change on two regulating ecosystem services-carbon sequestration and water purification in terms of nitrogen retention in the Czech Republic.While employing approaches of scenarios and modeling,we illustrate current and potential future status of these ecosystem services.Our results show that among the ecosystem change drivers,one of the dominant domestic land-use change of ALARM BAMBU(Business-As Might Be Usual)scenario is change of arable land and grassland to forest area that increases by 4.5%in 2080 compared to 2000.The results of ecosystem service modeling based on BAMBU scenario for the years 2050 and 2080 indicate that the highest yearly carbon sequestration rate occurred in 2000-2050,reaching 640 GgC·yr^(−1),2000-2080 shows decline in this regulating service by 16%.Average nitro-gen leaching to water streams reached 0.75 kgN·ha^(−1)·yr^(−1)for BAMBU in 2050 scenario and 0.80 kgN·ha^(−1)·yr^(−1)for BAMBU in 2080 scenario as a result of decreasing nitrogen load,which suggested a decrease in nitrogen pollution compared to 2000.Since ecosystem services have not been extensively mainstreamed into research and policies in eastern European countries,we aim to contribute to improvement of knowledge on current status and potential future pathways of the provision of regulating ecosystem services in the Czech Republic.

The Cornerstone of Economic Nationalism:National Self-image

The focus of this article is Estonia’s post-socialist economic transition and the rea­sons behind the liberal nature of the country’s economic policies.I argue that the self-image of a nation plays a significant role in shaping its economic policies.Objectives associated with economic nationalism can be achieved through various means that can include strategies of economic liberalism as well.Thus,the concepts of economic nationalism and economic liberalism are not a dichotomy.I examine the construction of the Estonian self-image through the discourses of radical indi­vidualism and industriousness,historical suffering,desire for freedom and return to Europe and sense of abandonment.By showing how these discourses interact with the liberal paradigm,I claim that Estonian policy-makers chose liberal eco­nomic policies because they perceived them to most effectively serve their objec­tives.When economic policies are examined in view of the national self-image and motivation of policy-makers,the incongruence between economic nationalism and liberal policies disappears.

Rural social-ecological systems navigating institutional transitions: case study from Transylvania (Romania)

Traditional rural social-ecological systems(SES)share many features which are crucial for sus-tainable development.Eastern European countries such as Romania,are still rich in traditional cultural landscapes.However,these landscapes are increasingly under internal(e.g.,people’s aspirations toward western socioeconomic ideals)and external(institutional changes,globalization of the commodity market,connectivity with other cultures)pressures.Therefore,understanding the ways how traditional SES navi-gated past and more recent changes is of crucial importance in getting insights about the future trajectory of these systems.Here,we present the rural SES from the Saxon region of Transylvania through the lens of institutional transitions which happened in the past century in this region.We show that the rural SES went through episodic collapses and renewals,their cyclic dynamic being related to the episodic chang-es of the higher level formal institutions.These episodic collapses and renewals created a social-ecolog-ical momentum for the sustainability of these SES.While we recognize that policy effectiveness depends on institutional stability(and institutions are unstable and prone to collapses),maintaining those social-ecological system properties which can assure navigation of societies through the challenges imposed by global changes should be in the heart of every governance system.Such properties includes wide extent of native vegetation,fertile soils,wide range of provisioning ecosystem services,genuine links between people and landscapes and knowledge about the social-ecological systems.These features could provide important capitals and memory elements for the(re)emergence of social-ecological systems(old or new).

Common and conflicting objectives and practices of herders and conservation managers:the need for a conservation herder

The mutual dependence of extensive land-use and conservation management has become appar-ent in Europe in the last 20-30 yr.Extensive land-use often survives in protected areas only,in the form of conservation management.Knowledge of extensive herding and that of conservation management are parts of two knowledge systems(traditional and scientific)which often leads to conflicts between locals and con-servationists.We studied two herding/conservation systems(salt steppes and wood-pastures),and devel-oped an inventory on the common/similar and conflicting/different objectives and pasture management practices of herders and conservationists.Data were collected by participatory knowledge co-production in teamwork of the co-authors(herders,conservation managers,and scientists).Data were analyzed and discussed in teamwork too.Herders and conservationists identified 23 objectives and 29 management prac-tices.We found a number of common interests with respect to herding,the ideal state of pastures,legal provisions,and communication.Conflict resolution recommendations(e.g.,on time and place of grazing,pasture improvements)were also developed.We argue that by co-production of knowledge,and establish-ment of a herder“school”the mitigation of the existing conflicts would be more effective.Our conclusion is that a new profession is needed:that of the conservation herder.The conservation herder shall be an indi-vidual knowledgeable about herding and pasture management,trained in conservation and ecology,able to design management experiments,and develop novel but tradition-based management practices.As such,he/she could facilitate adaptation of extensive herding in the changing socio-economic environment.