Climate influence on radial increment of oak (Quercus SP.) in central Poland

The study investigates the influence of climate conditions on radial increment of oak, with special concern to the situations when analysed trees formed conspicuously wider or narrower tree-rings. The research material was collected in four locations in central Poland within natural range of pedunculate and sessile oaks. The elaborated residual chronologies were correlated with CRUTS 2.1 climate data. The analyses included thermal and pluvial conditions spanning from April of the year prior to ring formation to September of the current growth year. Special interest was paid to simple water ability index that combined both temperature and precipitation during the vegetation season. Additionally, pointer year analysis was carried out to determine situations when conspicuously smaller or larger increment was formed. Investigated chronologies cover the period of 1927?C1992 (?ochów), 1845?C1992 (P?o??sk), 1868?C1992 (Pu?tusk), and 1796?C1992 (Soko?ów). The analysed oaks from sites in central Poland exhibit growth patterns comparable with those known form previous studies concerning that species, where influence of precipitation (higher and positive) and temperature (negative) have been observed. Extreme growth reactions expressed by negative and positive pointer years turned to present high dependence of analysed oak?? growth on water availability during vegetation season.     

Multi-proxy reconstruction of mire development in the Poręby Wojsławskie ecosystem (Sandomierz Basin, southeastern Poland)

Multi-proxy analysis (sedimentological, palaeobotanical, geochemical data and results of radiocarbon dating) of the biogenic sediments from a small mire ecosystem in the Sandomierz Basin (SE Poland) is presented. The ecosystem contains a full hydroseral sequence from minerotrophic to ombrotrophic wetland. It is one of the few sites in this region which is so thoroughly investigated in terms of the palaeoenvironmental record. Changes in the water supply of the mire area, and consequently the changes in the plant and sediment succession, were well correlated with the regional tendencies in precipitation and temperature during the Late Glacial/Holocene transition and in the Holocene. Human impact is very well recorded in pollen diagram from the Subboreal period.     

Internationalization as a challenge for geographical education in Poland: experience of a new postgraduate study “cultural industries in the development policies of cities and regions”

For many years internationalization has not been a strong point of geographical education in post-socialist countries, including Poland. Therefore, all attempts at intensifying it are a real challenge and good practices deserve dissemination. This paper seeks to present the organizational and programme assumptions of a new field of postgraduate study called Cultural industries in the development policies of cities and regions, (Project supported by the European Social Fund under the Human Capital Operational Programme in the years 2013–2015 (Priority IV: Tertiary Education and Science, Measure 4.3: Enhancing the didactic potential of universities in areas of key importance for the Europe 2020 Strategy. UDA-POKL.04.03.00–00-152/12–00).) developed by the staff of the Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Spatial Management of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland) as a didactic innovation, based on a modular system of education offering wide internationalization possibilities. The analysis focuses on experiences connected with this process. They include classes prepared in cooperation with visiting professors and practitioners from eight universities and European institutions as well as week-long practical placements in Brussels, arranged thanks to a network of experts and institutions specifically established for this purpose. The results obtained help to formulate conclusions and recommendations for higher schools interested in adopting this kind of good practices connected with the development of geographical education.     

Reenacting ethnic cleansing: people's history and elitist nationalism in contemporary Poland

This article addresses the problem of the present‐day historical discourse in Poland by taking under scrutiny one specific event: the historical re‐enactment of the ethnic cleansing of Polish villagers by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, staged in a small town in southeastern Poland, Radymno, in the summer of 2013. It is based on research, carried out by the author and a group of students in Radymno and its surroundings in the period preceding and following the performance, as well as on content analysis of the press. The comparison of the top‐down political and mass media discourse with local responses to the idea of re‐enactment and, more broadly, local understandings of Polish–Ukrainian relations, reveal many contradictions. In attempting to understand them, the article discusses broader ramifications of the ‘democratization of history’: the political contestation, class rhetoric and societal tensions that are tangled up in historical debates.     

The Environmental History of the Holocaust

ABSTRACT

The introduction conceptualizes environmental history of the Holocaust as a subdiscipline of Holocaust studies. The authors approach this emerging field of research through the context of environmental humanities with its current interest in the Anthropocene, soil science, forensics, multispecies collectives, and explorations of relations between ecocides and genocides. Proposed approach considers post-Holocaust spaces and landscapes as specific ecosystems and examines relations between its actors (human and non-human) in order to show the Holocaust’s spatial markers and long-terms effects. The article outlines existing literature on the subject, identifies the central research problems and questions, and discusses sources and methods. The authors demonstrate that the environmental history of the Holocaust applies a hybrid methodology that uses methods from various disciplines with the aim of creating new theories and interpretive categories and thus should be considered complementary to existing approaches in Holocaust studies. The authors follow the methodological principles of grounded theory in generating new concepts and seeking multidisciplinary methods for explaining nature’s role in the Holocaust and how Holocaust has changed nature. The authors claim that environmental history of the Holocaust broadens Holocaust studies as a field of research and opens up new questions concerning relations between nature and extermination in order to provide a more holistic perspective for exploring the relationship between culture and nature, genocide and ecocide. The approach proposed here shows Holocaust and post-Holocaust landscapes in terms of ecological/natural heritage, which might influence the way these spaces are commemorated, conserved and preserved, as well as used for tourist purposes.     

Gebel Ramlah—a Unique Newborns’ Cemetery of the Neolithic Sahara

Post-Pleistocene climatic improvement in the Northern Hemisphere after ca. 9550 BC allowed human populations to recolonize large parts of North Africa in what is today the Sahara Desert. In the Egyptian Western Desert, the beginnings of human occupation date as early as ca. 9300 BC. Occupation continued until the middle of the third millennium BC when final desertification of the area no longer afforded human occupation. The settlement of the Neolithic cattle and sheep/goat herders developed along with the rhythm of alternating wet and dry climatic oscillations. One of the areas occupied intensively during the early and middle Holocene was Gebel Ramlah. Pastoral populations established their settlements around the shores of a paleo-lake adjacent to a rocky massif, to exploit the local savannah environment. During most of the Neolithic, they buried their dead dispersed outside of their settlements. Only during the Final Neolithic (after ca. 4600 BC) did they place them exclusively in cemeteries. Of six Final Neolithic cemeteries investigated at Gebel Ramlah to date, one is entirely unprecedented, not only in North Africa but also globally at such an early date. For just under 200 years (ca. 4500–4300 BC), it served exclusively for the inhumation of infants who died around (perinate) or shortly after the time of birth (neonate). Thirty-two burial pits contained skeletal remains of 39 individuals, not only infants but also at least two adult females accompanied by perinates/neonates. Older children (>?3 years) were interred at a nearby cemetery that primarily comprised adults.