Palaeoecological data indicates land-use changes across Europe linked to spatial heterogeneity in mortality during the Black Death pandemic

Historical accounts of the mortality outcomes of the Black Death plague pandemic are variable across Europe, with much higher death tolls suggested in some areas than others. Here the authors use a 'big data palaeoecology' approach to show that land use change following the pandemic was spatially variable across Europe, confirming heterogeneous responses with empirical data.The Black Death (1347-1352 ce) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe's population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic's causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, 'big data palaeoecology', which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death's mortality on a regional scale across Europe. We collected pollen data on landscape change from 261 radiocarbon-dated coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located across 19 modern-day European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others. These inter-regional differences in the Black Death's mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic, societal and climatic factors that mediated the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the historical ecology of plague, should be a focus of future research on historical pandemics

The Eurasian Modern Pollen Database (EMPD), version 2

The Eurasian (nee European) Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) was established in 2013 to provide a public database of high-quality modern pollen surface samples to help support studies of past climate, land cover, and land use using fossil pollen. The EMPD is part of, and complementary to, the European Pollen Database (EPD) which contains data on fossil pollen found in Late Quaternary sedimentary archives throughout the Eurasian region. The EPD is in turn part of the rapidly growing Neotoma database, which is now the primary home for global palaeoecological data. This paper describes version 2 of the EMPD in which the number of samples held in the database has been increased by 60% from 4826 to 8134. Much of the improvement in data coverage has come from northern Asia, and the database has consequently been renamed the Eurasian Modern Pollen Database to reflect this geographical enlargement. The EMPD can be viewed online using a dedicated map-based viewer at https://empd2.github.io and downloaded in a variety of file formats at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.909130 (Chevalier et al., 2019).Peer reviewe

The Eurasian Modern Pollen Database (EMPD), version 2

The Eurasian (née European) Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) was established in 2013 to provide a public database of high-quality modern pollen surface samples to help support studies of past climate, land cover, and land use using fossil pollen. The EMPD is part of, and complementary to, the European Pollen Database (EPD) which contains data on fossil pollen found in Late Quaternary sedimentary archives throughout the Eurasian region. The EPD is in turn part of the rapidly growing Neotoma database, which is now the primary home for global palaeoecological data. This paper describes version 2 of the EMPD in which the number of samples held in the database has been increased by 60 % from 4826 to 8134. Much of the improvement in data coverage has come from northern Asia, and the database has consequently been renamed the Eurasian Modern Pollen Database to reflect this geographical enlargement. The EMPD can be viewed online using a dedicated map-based viewer at https://empd2.github.io and downloaded in a variety of file formats at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.909130 (Chevalier et al., 2019)Swiss National Science Foundation | Ref. 200021_16959

Palaeoecological data indicates land-use changes across Europe linked to spatial heterogeneity in mortality during the Black Death pandemic

The Black Death (1347–1352 CE) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe’s population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic’s causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, ‘big data palaeoecology’, which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death’s mortality on a regional scale across Europe. We collected pollen data on landscape change from 261 radiocarbon-dated coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located across 19 modern-day European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others. These inter-regional differences in the Black Death’s mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic, societal and climatic factors that mediated the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the historical ecology of plague, should be a focus of future research on historical pandemics.The authors acknowledge the following funding sources: Max Planck Independent Research Group, Palaeo-Science and History Group (A.I., A.M. and C.V.); Estonian Research Council #PRG323, PUT1173 (A.Pos., T.R., N.S. and S.V.); European Research Council #FP7 263735 (A.Bro. and A.Plu.), #MSC 655659 (A.E.); Georgetown Environmental Initiative (T.N.); Latvian Council of Science #LZP-2020/2-0060 (N.S. and N.J.); LLNL-JRNL-820941 (I.T.); NSF award #GSS-1228126 (S.M.); Polish-Swiss Research Programme #013/2010 CLIMPEAT (M.Lam.), #086/2010 CLIMPOL (A.W.); Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education #N N306 275635 (M.K.); Polish National Science Centre #2019/03/X/ST10/00849 (M.Lam.), #2015/17/B/ST10/01656 (M.Lam.), #2015/17/B/ST10/03430 (M.Sło.), #2018/31/B/ST10/02498 (M.Sło.), #N N304 319636 (A.W.); SCIEX #12.286 (K.Mar.); Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness #REDISCO-HAR2017-88035-P (J.A.L.S.); Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports #FPU16/00676 (R.L.L.); Swedish Research Council #421-2010-1570 (P.L.), #2018-01272 (F.C.L. and A.S.); Volkswagen Foundation Freigeist Fellowship Dantean Anomaly (M.B.), Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation #RTI2018-101714-B-I00 (F.A.S. and D.A.S.), OP RDE, MEYS project #CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000728 (P.P.)Peer reviewe

Palaeoecological data indicates land-use changes across Europe linked to spatial heterogeneity in mortality during the Black Death pandemic

The Black Death (1347–1352 CE) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe’s population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic’s causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, ‘big data palaeoecology’, which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death’s mortality on a regional scale across Europe. We collected pollen data on landscape change from 261 radiocarbon-dated coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located across 19 modern-day European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others. These inter-regional differences in the Black Death’s mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic, societal and climatic factors that mediated the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the historical ecology of plague, should be a focus of future research on historical pandemics

Anthropogenic transformations of Rzecin peatland recorded on aerial photographs

Ze względu na bogactwo florystyczne, zróżnicowanie zbiorowisk roślinnych oraz stan zachowania ekosystemu, Torfowisko Rzecińskie w 2008 roku objęte zostało ochroną w ramach programu Natura 2000 (PLH300019). Stosunkowa duża bioróżnorodność, występowanie kilku glacjalnych gatunków reliktowych oraz perdochoryczny charakter niemal połowy z rozpoznanych na stanowisku zbiorowisk roślinnych, sugeruje naturalność siedliska i mały stopień ingerencji człowieka w jego strukturę. Tymczasem, szczegółowe badania paleoekologiczne wskazują, że znaczna część mokradła powstała w okresie ostatnich kilkuset lat i jest znacznie młodsza niż dotychczas przypuszczano. Ponadto wyniki te sugerują, że zarówno powstanie jak i dalszy rozwój torfowiska związany jest w dużej mierze z działalnością człowieka, który głównie poprzez działania hydrotechniczne wpływał na florę oraz dynamikę roślinności. W niniejszej pracy wykonano analizę zdjęć lotniczych obszaru Torfowiska Rzecin z ostatnich 50 lat. Wyniki wskazują, że stopień bezpośredniego oddziaływania człowieka na powierzchniową strukturę torfowiska ulegał zmianie w czasie. Porównanie treści serii zdjęć lotniczych pozwoliło wyróżnić zarówno obszary poddane intensywnej antropopresji (użytkowane rolniczo, w tym meliorowane), jak i stosunkowo mało przekształcone, a zatem najbardziej odpowiednie dla badań paleoekologicznych. Największe przekształcenia powierzchniowej struktury torfowiska nastąpiły do roku 1964. Od tego czasu, na kolejnych zdjęciach lotniczych liczba obiektów zaklasyfikowanych jako sztuczne wyraźnie malała. Na najstarszym zdjęciu zidentyfikowano 106 antropogenicznych obiektów liniowych (rowy, granice działek, itp.) o łącznej długości przekraczającej 6,6 km, natomiast na najnowszym obrazie takich obiektów odnaleziono zaledwie 40 a suma ich długości wyniosła ok. 3,5 km. Jeszcze wyraźniej zaznacza się spadek udziału powierzchni przekształconych w całkowitej powierzchni mokradła; z 6,3 % w 1964 r. do 0,1 % w 2011. Najwięcej obiektów antropogenicznych zidentyfikowano w północno-zachodniej, środkowo-południowej i wschodniej części torfowiska. W pierwszym i drugim obszarze są one śladami prób rolniczego wykorzystania mokradła, natomiast w ostatnim występują obiekty zinterpretowane głównie jako drobne rowy melioracyjne. W wyniku przeprowadzenia interpretacji sekwencji zdjęć lotniczych odnotowano, że w badanym okresie najmniej przekształcony został interior torfowiska położony na zachód od jeziora Rzecińskiego.Due to floristic richness, plant communities diversity and good condition of wetland ecosystem in 2008 Rzecin Peatland (PLH300019) have been joined into Natura 2000 network of protected sites. In previous investigations several glacial relicts have been detected within the site and what is more nearly half of identified plant communities has been defined as perdochoric. That can suggest that human impact on the wetland ecosystem was quite small and its present state is quasi-natural. However, according to palaeoecological research conducted at this wetland, much of the wetland was formed during last couple of centuries, and because of that is much younger than previously thought. Moreover, these results suggests that both the beginnings of the peatland and its development could be under strong influence of human, who was affecting the ecosystem mainly by melioration works. The main aim of this paper is to determine those parts of the peatland which are the most and least affected by human activity by analyzing airborne imagery. Moreover changes in anthropopressure degree during last 50 years are analyzed. The comparison of multitemporal images allowed also to distinguish areas with intensive drainage system, those used for agriculture, and those on which human influence was quite weak, and because of that fact, which are the most suitable for most of palaeoecological researches. The greatest number of artificial objects has been noticed in the pictures from 1964. However it seems that many of them are artifacts from previous periods. In subsequent years this number significantly decrease. 106 artificial linear objects (ditches, field boundaries, etc.) with a total length of more than 6.6 km have been identified in the pictures from that year, when in the last picture (from 2011) only 40 objects with the total length of 3.5 km. Also, the decline in percentage of humantransformed areas can be observed; in 1964 they covered 6.3 % of the peatland, while in 2011 – only 0.1 %. Objects interpreted as anthropogenic appear the most often in the north-west, south-central and east-central part of the mire. In the first and second mentioned places their genesis is probably connected with agricultural use of peatland; in the last one – with drainage system. Multitemporal analysis of aerial photographs allowed also to suppose that the least transformed part of Rzecin Peatland is its central area located to the west of the lake

Changes of trophy in soft water lakes of Tuchola Pinewoods (N Poland).

Soft water lakes are mostly acid, poor in minerals and have a lot of free CO2 in their water and bottom sediments. So called Lobelia lakes, containing Lobelia dortmanna L., Isoëtes lacustris L., and Littorella uniflora (L.) Ascherson, are a type of soft water lakes. These species are rare in Poland and in Europe mainly because of eutrophication and anthropopression. Lobelia lakes and ecology of isoetids were described in many scientific articles, but their history is poorly recognised. Thus, for some years palaeoecological research has been done in the Tuchola Pinewoods to reveal the time of migration, spreading and development of Lobelia lakes. Pollen analysis and diatom analysis were done for the sediments of lakes: Nierybno, Okoń Duży, Linowskie, Moczadło and Nawionek (Fig. 1). Content of plant remains of Lobelia dortmanna nad Isoëtes lacustris, fossil diatoms and Pediastrum indicates phases of low and high trophy of Lake Nierybno (Fig. 5). The highest trophy was found in the Younger Dryas, in the middle Boreal Period and the oldest time of Subboreal Period. The lowest trophy was observed at the beginning of the Holocene, in the Atlantic Period and in modern times. Low trophy of the lake is related to acid or neutral pH of the water. Reconstruction of the lake history based on diatom analysis shows two main phases of the Nierybno ecosystem existence. In the early stages of the lake’s development it was an eutrophic basin with elevated pH. At the beginning of the Atlantic Period the pH decreased and content of nutrients in the water was reduced. Navicula radiosa, N. leptostriata and N. heimansioides, species typical for Lobelia lakes have been present since then. Generally Lobelia lakes are well preserved in the Tuchola Pinewoods due to low anthropopression and conservation activity of the Tuchola Pinewoods National Park and the Zaborski Landscape Park