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Forum Carpaticum 2020 call for papers
Forum Carpaticum call for papers: We invite you to submit session proposal and abstracts for the next Forum Capaticum conference in Brno 22-26.06.2020.
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The Network
Forum Carpaticum 2020
The call for sessions and papers has been announced. The conference will take place in Brno, Czechia 22-26 June 2020. Please find below the most important dates. All the details, including conference program, venue description, important dates, organizers and other useful information can be found on the conference website.
Dates & Deadlines
9 February - Session proposals deadline
7 March - Abstract submission deadline
5 April - Notification of abstract acceptance
30 April - Early bird registration deadline
30 May - Standard fee registration deadline
19 June - Latest registration deadline
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Executive Board and Scientific Steering Committee activities
FC 2020 Visegrad Grant
The Executive Board members submitted a grant supporting FC 2020 conference and the side events connected to the conference. In late December, the consortium received the information, that the submission was successful, which will help in ensuring a high level of the events.
Carpathian Convention Seminar on Education for Sustainable Development
S4C SSC representatives and supporters Christian Hoffmann, Elena Matei, Marcel Mindrescu, Tamara Mitrofanenko, Mihaela Verga and Joanna Zawiejska, took part in the event organised by the Carpathian Convention on education for sustainable development. The event took place in Budapest 16-18 April 2019. The event was also an occasion to organise the S4C SSC meeting, in which Pavel Cudlín, Ľuboš Halada, Christian Hoffmann, Katalin Mázsa, Marcel Mindrescu, Péter Ódor, Márta Vetier and Joanna Zawiejska took part.
9th meeting of the Carpathian Convention Working Group on Biodiversity
S4C SSC members Joanna Zawiejska, Ľuboš Halada and Pavel Cudlin took part in the meeting of the CC Working Group on Biodiversity, organised 30-31 May in Ostrava. S4C prepared two presentations on the research agenda and recommendations regarding biodiversity changes and large carnivores connectivity.
10th meeting of the Carpathian Convention Implementation Committee
S4C Chair Katalin Mázsa and S4C SSC member Márta Vetier represented the network at the 10th meeting of the Carpathian Convention Implementation Committee (CCIC) which was held on 11 – 13 December in Budapest. S4C members presented network activities and introduced the main goals of the forthcoming FC 2020.
6th Carpathian Convention Working Group on Climate Change
Meeting of the WG Climate Change group was organised on 9 October 2019 in Budapest, Hungary. The S4C was represented by the S4C Chair, Katalin Mázsa, who gave a presentation about the S4C activities and preparation for the next Forum Carpaticum conference.
International Mountain Day 2019 in Romania
S4C SSC member Elena Matei co-organised the celebration of the International Mountain Day 2019 in the Faculty of Geography, University of Bucharest and supported the celebration of the event in Romanian schools. During the event, she introduced the S4C activities to the participants.
Communications update
S4C SSC member Catalina Munteanu joined our communications team. Catalina and Dominik ensure that the S4C website is continuously updated (check out the new Carpathian Data section, where you can share your data!). We are now more active on Twitter and have welcomed new members into our community. Check out the details at http://carpathianscience.org/.
Call for thematic Newsflashes
We now offer our community members the possibility to release a thematic Newsflash edition. If you are interested to present projects, publications, events or introduce scientists working on a common topic in the Carpathians, please contact Dominik Kaim or Catalina Munteanu for details. We will provide the editorial support for your dedicated special edition. We hope that thematic Newsflashes will be an exciting new avenue to promote research done by the S4C community members.
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Carpathian researchers
We introduce new Carpathian Research, from researchers that have so far not been involved in the S4C Network. Please meet Anna Bucała-Chrabia, Angelica Feurdean, Monika Vasile and Žiga Malek.
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The impact of short-term land use changes on environmental processes in the small catchments of the Polish Western Carpathians during transition from centrally planned to free-marked economics - research done by Anna Bucała-Chrabia
Land use and land cover changes (LULC) and their environmental impact were studied in the Jaszcze-Jamne, Homerka, Uszwica catchments (~20 km2 each) in the central part of the Polish Western Carpathians in 1975-2015. It was hypothesised that short-term LULC changes after 1989 are sufficient to modify selected elements of the environment and that these changes can be identified in a measurable way. The analysis of aerial photographs and socio-economic data indicates that the forest area increased by 20-27%, with a continuous decrease of cultivated land by 89-93% in the three catchments. LULC changes were accompanied by continuous population density growth by 29-50% and a decrease of the population dependent only on agriculture to less than 5%. Analyses confirmed the hypothesis that the environment was significantly modified due to the LULC changes. Abandonment of cultivated land, forest succession and a decrease in used road density, have resulted in lower efficiency of slope wash and sediment transport within catchments. This has led to an interruption of aggradation and initiated channel deepening by ~1cm∙year-1 after the introduction of a free-market economy in 1989.
Fig.: (A) Study area on the background of the Polish Carpathians; (B) hypsometric curves of the three catchments on the background of geomorphological units and climate-vegetation zones; (C) Changes in the proportion of forest cover and cultivated land with elevation of each 100 m altitude class in the three catchments for 1975-2015
More details in the paper
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Mapping the way we change our land use - reaserch done by Žiga Malek
We have modified most of terrestrial surface by changing the land use and land cover, impacting ecosystems, water resources and the climate. While we have a lot of information on where such changes occur, we do not know much about why they occur. Žiga is currently involved in studying how the local socio-economic, soil and climate characteristics shape the decisions to change the land use. He collected numerous studies on local land use change and combined them with statistics and geographic information systems. This way, he identified how the decisions to convert a forest to cropland, abandon a pasture or intensify agricultural activities can be influenced by local geographic characteristics. This is particularly important for the Carpathians, a region with diverse physical-geographic conditions and drastic recent socio-economic changes. The results can be used to plan for more sustainable land use in the future.
Figure: The likelihood for diversification of land use activities in Europe. The Carpathians region has been identified as a region with high likelihood for diversification of land use activities, meaning that people engage in different land use activities in the same landscape (cropland, grazing, forestry…)
More on the research:
Malek, Ž., Douw, B., Van Vliet, J., Van Der Zanden, E.H. and Verburg, P.H., 2019. Local land-use decision-making in a global context. Environmental Research Letters, 14(8), p.083006.
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Fire as a driver of ecosystem functioning in Central and Eastern Europe: a palaeo- perspective on the region’s future forests - reaserch done by Angelica Feurdean
Landscape disturbance by fire is essential for forest renewal, diversity and the control of insect and disease damage. However, our understanding of the role of fire regime dynamics in ecosystem functioning and biodiversity in Central Eastern Europe is limited. This is particularly critical given the changing disturbance-climate interactions anticipated in future. My work uses a palaeoecological approach (fossil pollen, charcoal) alongside fire-related plant functional traits and brings the perspectives of space and time into questions of disturbance-species-climate relationships. Such spatial-temporal connections between plants, plant traits and disturbance allow an evaluation of the potential of vegetation to maintain existing fire regimes or to adapt to new fire regimes in the future. This is an essential prerequisite for effective land management planning not only to reduce risks from fires, but also for a sustainable exploitation of forest resources.
More details in the paper:
Feurdean, A., Tonkov, S., Pfeiffer, M., Panait, A., Warren, D., Vannière, B. and Marinova, E., 2019. Fire frequency and intensity associated with functional traits of dominant forest type in the Balkans during the Holocene. European Journal of Forest Research, 138(6), pp.1049-1066.
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The Forest Never Ends: Timbermen, Mafias and Bison in the Postsocialist Carpathian Mountains - new book by Monika Vasile
Stay tuned for a new book on The Forest Never Ends: Timbermen, Mafias and Bison in the Postsocialist Carpathian Mountains. In the book, the environmental anthropologist Monica Vasile reveals the grassroots stories that shape contemporary Carpathian forests, also tracing their historical legacies. It explores a large cast of characters, from timber barons to lumberjacks, from foresters to regional politicians, from European bison to feral dogs. It examines the transformation of the Carpathian forests from areas of intense timber extraction into areas of exotic wilderness. The first part, the Boom Forest, tells the story of a timber boom, a moment of freedom and prosperity for small-scale timbermen. The second part, the Fiefdom Forest looks at how these freedoms started to shrink after year 2000, when in the context of forest restitution, control institutions became stronger, which resulted in increased corruption and political struggle, and also increased forest disturbance. The third part, the Forest of Rewilding, captures the rise of environmentalism, and shows how Romanian Carpathian forests gain new value as virgin corners of wilderness, home to reintroduced European Bison. Situated at the confluence between anthropology, history, and political ecology, the book builds upon fifteen years of research, drawing on a large array of ethnographic and archival sources, including more than 300 collected oral histories.
More on the topic in recent publications:
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Carpathian science (or not) related
(Lynx) mum of four
Researchers from Poland recorded lynx female with four young cats! Thanks to the camera traps located in Beskid Żywiecki, on the borderland between Poland, Slovakia and Czechia, researchers from the Association for Nature "WOLF" recorded such an optimistic scene. So far, the traps showed a lynx mum with up to two, or much more rarely, three kittens. The whole Carpathian lynx population is currently estimated on not more than 2500 individuals. The film can be seen below.
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Film was prepared by the Association for Nature "WOLF" - http://www.polishwolf.org.pl/.
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