The new features of landslide relief discovered using LiDAR – case study from Babia Góra massif, Western Carpathian Mountains

Basing on LiDAR data, the re-interpretation of the limit and distribution of the selected landslide forms in 9 test areas were carried out. The forms are located at the slopes of the monoclinal ridge of Babia Góra Mt. (1,725 m a.s.l.) in the flysch Western Carpathians. The earlier knowledge on these landforms is shown in the unpublished map at the scale of 1:5,000 which was prepared basing on geomorphological mapping. Basing on the newest information source, subtle geomorphic signatures of landslides were found, the dynamics of these forms and directions of their further development were determined. Local differentiation of deep-seated landslides was indicated according to the relation between the sandstone layer dip and slope inclination, slope length, and altitude of the location of headwaters. An attention was paid to polycyclic relief of the highest located landslide forms, which contain the elements of glacial and nival morphology, and some are modelled by debris flows

A definition and standardised terminology for Blue Intensity from Conifers

RW acknowledges funding from NSF/NERC project (NE/W007223/1) – Understanding Trans-Hemispheric Modes of Climate Variability: A Novel Tree-Ring Data Transect spanning the Himalaya to the Southern Ocean. KS and JB were supported by the Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas (grant no. 2019-01482) and the Stiftelsen Margit Althins stipendiefond (GS2021-0023).The published literature of the past 20 years expresses inconsistent terminology for the Blue Intensity (BI) method that could lead to confusion in analysis and interpretation. In this technical note we propose a standard terminology based around the prevalent use of BI for the variant that is positively correlated with wood density derived from X-ray and equivalent wood anatomical techniques. We highlight significant practical advantages of this standard terminology for data analysis, scientific interpretations as well as archiving, and provide some cautionary examples that could occur if not adhering to this terminology. In future studies using BI, we recommend to explicitly clarify that the standard terminology is used with the following phrase: The BI data produced in this study is consistent with the ‘2024 BI standard terminology’.Peer reviewe

The dendrochronological methods of snow avalanche investigation

Despite their strength, snow avalanches leave a very diverse record in the environment. For this reason, the reconstruction of the occurrence, time and magnitude of avalanches is a really demanding task. It can only be performed in places where avalanches reach forests, leaving their marks in the macroscale (lowering the upper timberline) and microscale (damaging individual trees). Appropriately adapted dendrochronological methods allow dating the avalanche events. Combining the dendrochronological analyses with other techniques enables to obtain a multi-dimensional image of ava-lanche events. The application of the basic dendrogeomorphological techniques is discussed on the example of the results of the research from the Biały Żleb chute located in the High Tatras. The obtained reconstruction of avalanche activity covers more than 100 years and points to five major avalanche events in the period from 1912 to 2009. The employment of GIS techniques allowed to extend the reconstruction by a spatial element indicating the range of the past events

Regional Patterns of Late Medieval and Early Modern European Building Activity Revealed by Felling Dates

Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Andrea Seim, Willy Tegel, Paul J. Krusic, Claudia Baittinger, Christelle Belingard, Mauro Bernabei, Niels Bonde, Paul Borghaerts, Yann Couturier, Anne Crone, Sjoerd van Daalen, Aoife Daly, Petra Doeve, Marta Domínguez-Delmás, Jean-Louis Edouard, Thomas Frank, Christian Ginzler, Michael Grabner, Friederike M. Gschwind, Kristof Haneca, Anton Hansson, Franz Herzig, Karl-Uwe Heussner, Jutta Hofmann, David Houbrechts, Ryszard Jerzy Kaczka, Tomáš Kolář, Raymond Kontic, Tomáš Kyncl, Vincent Labbas, Per Lagerås, Yannick Le Digol, Melaine Le Roy, Hanns Hubert Leuschner, Hans Linderson, Francis Ludlow, Axel Marais, Coralie M. Mills, Mechthild Neyses-Eiden, Kurt Nicolussi, Christophe Perrault, Klaus Pfeifer, Michal Rybníček, Andreas Rzepecki, Martin Schmidhalter, Mathias Seifert, Lisa Shindo, Barbara Spyt, Josué Susperregi, Helene Løvstrand Svarva, Terje Thun, Felix Walder, Tomasz Ważny, Elise Werthe, Thorsten Westphal, Rob Wilson, Ulf BüntgenAlthough variations in building activity are a useful indicator of societal well-being and demographic development, historical datasets for larger regions and longer periods are still rare. Here, we present 54,045 annually precise dendrochronological felling dates from historical construction timber from across most of Europe between 1250 and 1699 CE to infer variations in building activity. We use geostatistical techniques to compare spatiotemporal dynamics in past European building activity against independent demographic, economic, social and climatic data. We show that the felling dates capture major geographical patterns of demographic trends, especially in regions with dense data coverage. A particularly strong negative association is found between grain prices and the number of felling dates. In addition, a significant positive association is found between the number of felling dates and mining activity. These strong associations, with well-known macro-economic indicators from pre-industrial Europe, corroborate the use of felling dates as an independent source for exploring large-scale fluctuations of societal well-being and demographic development. Three prominent examples are the building boom in the Hanseatic League region of northeastern Germany during the 13th century, the onset of the Late Medieval Crisis in much of Europe c. 1300, and the cessation of building activity in large parts of central Europe during armed conflicts such as the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648 CE). Despite new insights gained from our European-wide felling date inventory, further studies are needed to investigate changes in construction activity of high versus low status buildings, and of urban versus rural buildings, and to compare those results with a variety of historical documentary sources and natural proxy archives

Higher Winter-Spring Temperature and Winter-Spring/Summer Moisture Availability Increase Scots Pine Growth on Coastal Dune Microsites Around the South Baltic Sea

Coastal sand dunes near the Baltic Sea are a dynamic environment marking the boundary between land and sea and oftentimes covered by Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) forests. Complex climate-environmental interactions characterize these ecosystems and largely determine the productivity and state of these coastal forests. In the face of future climate change, understanding interactions between coastal tree growth and climate variability is important to promote sustainable coastal forests. In this study, we assessed the effect of microsite conditions on tree growth and the temporal and spatial variability of the relationship between climate and Scots pine growth at nine coastal sand dune sites located around the south Baltic Sea. At each site, we studied the growth of Scots pine growing at microsites located at the ridge and bottom of a dune and built a network of 18 ring-width and 18 latewood blue intensity chronologies. Across this network, we found that microsite has a minor influence on ring-width variability, basal area increment, latewood blue intensity, and climate sensitivity. However, at the local scale, microsite effects turned out to be important for growth and climate sensitivity at some sites. Correlation analysis indicated that the strength and direction of climate-growth responses for the ring-width and blue intensity chronologies were similar for climate variables over the 1903–2016 period. A strong and positive relationship between ring-width and latewood blue intensity chronologies with winter-spring temperature was detected at local and regional scales. We identified a relatively strong, positive influence of winter-spring/summer moisture availability on both tree-ring proxies. When climate-growth responses between two intervals (1903–1959, 1960–2016) were compared, the strength of growth responses to temperature and moisture availability for both proxies varied. More specifically, for the ring-width network, we identified decreasing temperature-growth responses, which is in contrast to the latewood blue intensity network, where we documented decreasing and increasing temperature-growth relationships in the north and south respectively. We conclude that coastal Scots pine forests are primarily limited by winter-spring temperature and winterspring/summer drought despite differing microsite conditions.We detected some spatial and temporal variability in climate-growth relationships that warrant further investigation

I-BIND:International Blue Intensity Network Development Working Group

Blue Intensity (BI) is coming of age in dendrochronology, although some methodological challenges are still left to be solved. In the last 20 years, 59 papers have been published focussing mainly on climatological based studies, although BI has also been shown to be useful both for historical dating and dendroecological studies. This short paper briefly reviews the BI method development of the last two decades and introduces a new collaborative initiative called I-BIND (International Blue Intensity Network Development Working Group), which is supported by the Association of Tree-Ring Research. The main aims of I-BIND are to promote continued methodological development, communicate best practice via workshops, encourage the development of BI data networks to enhance both dendroclimatology and dendro-historical dating, and to create a rich environment in which innovative and novel initiatives can be explored and discussed

Development of tourist infrastructure on Babia Góra Mt. ( Western Carpathians) in conditions where there is risk due to slope processes

The aim of the paper is to evaluate the sustainability of the location of all elements of tourist infrastructure on the slopes of Babia Góra Mt. in the Western Beskidy Mountains taking into account local relief and a range of geomorphologic processes. For more than 130 years, local tourist facilities remained unthreatened by slope processes with the exception of very limited sections of the northern slope. A deep-seated landslide reactivated in the mid 19th century affected a small section of that slope that is outside of regular tourist traffic while another landslide, a shallow one that remains active, has been damaging a single marked tourist trail. Debris flows observed locally on the northern slope are not typical of contemporary relief dynamics across Babia Góra Mt. and therefore cannot be regarded as a universal threat to local tourist infrastructure. In addition, snow avalanches that reach short stretches of tourist trails on the northern slope have not damaged them. The current hazard status of the tourist infrastructure on Babia Góra Mt. is clearly better than it would have been if certain heavy development plans had been carried out in geomorphologically ulnerable areas

The New Features of Landslide Relief Discovered Using Lidar – Case Study from Babia Góra Massif, Western Carpathian Mountains

Basing on LiDAR data, the re-interpretation of the limit and distribution of the selected landslide forms in 9 test areas were carried out. The forms are located at the slopes of the monoclinal ridge of Babia Góra Mt. (1,725 m a.s.l.) in the flysch Western Carpathians. The earlier knowledge on these landforms is shown in the unpublished map at the scale of 1:5,000 which was prepared basing on geomorphological mapping. Basing on the newest information source, subtle geomorphic signatures of landslides were found, the dynamics of these forms and directions of their further development were determined. Local differentiation of deep-seated landslides was indicated according to the relation between the sandstone layer dip and slope inclination, slope length, and altitude of the location of headwaters. An attention was paid to polycyclic relief of the highest located landslide forms, which contain the elements of glacial and nival morphology, and some are modelled by debris flows