Petr Kuneš

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at Charles University in Prague

Disturbances such as fires and grazing have major impacts on biodiversity. While it has been suggested that species richness is highest with intermediate levels of disturbance, currently there is no consensus due to an absence of data covering large temporal and spatial scales. We developed a new method to examine disturbance‐diversity relationship...

Understanding pollen-vegetation relationships is crucial for accurate land-cover and climate reconstructions, yet important parameters for quantifying past vegetation abundance are mostly unknown for large parts of Europe harbouring temperate thermophilous ecosystems. We collected pollen and vegetation data in central-eastern Europe, a region cover...

Over the past few decades, mean summer temperatures within the Carpathian Mountains have increased by as much as 2 °C leading to a projected increased forest fire risk. Currently, there are no paleofire records from the Western Carpathians that provide the long-term range of natural variability to contextualise the response of upper-montane forests...

Aim Pollen has been used before to reconstruct Holocene plant diversity changes in broadly delimited regions such as continents and countries. In this study we ask whether finer‐scale differences in plant diversity, which are of interest to biogeographers and ecologists, are also detectable in the fossil pollen record coming from a single, biogeogr...

The pace of Holocene vegetation change Although much is known about the rapid environmental changes that have occurred since the Industrial Revolution, the patterns of change over the preceding millennia have been only patchily understood. Using a global set of >1100 fossil pollen records, Mottl et al. explored the rates of vegetation change over t...

Central European mountains, including the Š umava Mountains located along the Czechia/Germany border, have a long and rich anthropogenic history. Yet, documenting prehistoric human impact in Central European mountain environments remains a challenge because of the need to disentangle climate and human-caused responses in terrestrial systems. Here,...

The projected rise in fire activity due to climate change challenges forest conservation efforts worldwide. Current non-intervention approaches, which rely on natural processes for ecosystem conservation, often overlook palaeoecological data depicting long-term, local interactions between fire regime components, forest structure and composition, so...

The shift towards cultivating domesticated crops was a pivotal development in ecological, economic, and human behavioural systems. As agriculture expanded beyond its origins, it faced diverse environments, often unsuitable for the originally cultivated domesticates. Farmers in Central Europe had to adjust and transform their farming systems, typica...

Multi-proxy temperature reconstructions can provide robust insights into past environmental conditions. By combining different proxies we can disentangle the temperature signal from the indirect climate effects on the environment. This study uses a multi-proxy approach to reconstruct temperature and palaeoenvironmental conditions during the Late Gl...

Remote islands harbour many endemic species and unique ecosystems. They are also some of the world's most human-impacted systems. It is essential to understand how island species and ecosystems behaved prior to major anthropogenic disruption as a basis for their conservation. This research aims to reconstruct the original, pre-colonial biodiversity...

The extent of vegetation openness in past European landscapes is widely debated. In particular, the temperate forest biome has traditionally been defined as dense, closed-canopy forest; however, some argue that large herbivores maintained greater openness or even wood-pasture conditions. Here, we address this question for the Last Interglacial peri...

Rhododendron tomentosum is a vascular plant common in northern regions of Europe, Asia and North America. In central Europe, this species is considered a glacial relict. In recent years, systematic floristic mapping of the distribution of this species in the Bohemian Switzerland National Park has revealed that this rare and highly sensitive species...

Aim : In recent decades, a surge in the number of significant and uncontrolled wildfires has occurred worldwide. Global warming may amplify this trend and threaten most ecosystems worldwide. Deciduous forests are characterized by high plant diversity, and understanding their long-term dynamics is crucial to anticipate changes in these ecosystems d...

Analysis of phytoliths (plant silica bodies) still may have an unrevealed potential in paleoenvironmental reconstruction studies. This can provide novel findings in research on environmental change as phytoliths play an important role in the silicon biogeochemical cycle. In favorable environmental conditions, Picea abies [L.] H. Karst (Norway spruc...

V ochraně přírody bývá dlouhodobá perspektiva týkající se výskytu ohrožených druhů nebo stavu či rozšíření vzácných biotopů často podceňována či přehlížena, přitom může poskytovat zásadní informace pro adaptace na probíhající klimatickou změnu, která je umocněna inten-zivním či dlouhodobě neudržitelným využíváním krajiny (Kuneš 2020). Informace o v...

Water brownification has long altered freshwater ecosystems across the northern hemisphere. The intensive surface water brownification of the last 30 years was however preceded by previous long-lasting more humic browning episodes in many catchments. To disentangle a cascade of browning-induced environmental stressors this longer temporal perspecti...

Mitigating the effects of global change on biodiversity requires its understanding in the past. The main proxy of plant diversity, fossil pollen record, has a complex relationship to surrounding vegetation and unknown spatial scale. We explored both using modern pollen spectra in species-rich and species-poor regions in temperate Central Europe. We...

Quantitative reconstructions of past land cover are necessary to determine the processes involved in climate-human-land-cover interactions. We present the first temporally continuous and most spatially extensive pollen-based land-cover reconstruction for Europe over the Holocene (last 11 700 cal yr BP). We describe how vegetation cover has been qua...

Recent catastrophic fires in Australia and North America have raised broad‐scale questions about how the cessation of Indigenous burning practices has impacted fuel accumulation and structure. For sustainable coexistence with fire, a better understanding of the ancient nexus between humans and flammable landscapes is needed. We used novel palaeoeco...

Temperate mountain forests have experienced an increase in frequency and severity of natural disturbances (e.g., droughts, fires, windstorms and insect outbreaks) in recent decades due to climate and environmental change. Outbreaks of bark beetles have caused significant dieback of conifer forests in Central Europe and it is essential to model and...

Some species of two tribes (Anthidiini and Osmiini) of the bee family Megachilidae utilize empty gastropod shells as nesting cavities. While snail-nesting Osmiini have been more frequently studied and the nesting biology of several species is well-known, much less is known about the habits of snail-nesting Anthidiini. We collected nests of four spe...

In this study we aim to investigate millennial-scale dynamics of Isoëtes, a type of macrophyte well adapted to oligotrophic and clear-water lakes. Despite its wide distribution during the Early Holocene, nowadays Isoëtes is considered as vulnerable or critically endangered in many Central European countries. Using a multi-proxy palaeoecological rec...

Disentangling the long-term changes in forest disturbance dynamics provides a basis for predicting the forest responses to changing environmental conditions. The combination of multidisciplinary records can offer more robust reconstructions of past forest disturbance dynamics. Here we link disturbance histories of the central European mountain spru...

Aims Reconstruction of the Holocene diversity changes in a biogeographically complex region. Description of major diversity patterns, testing their predictors, and their interpretation in the palaeoecological and biogeographical context. Testing the assumption that pollen record is informative with respect to plant diversity in our study area. Met...

Pollen is an abundant fossil and the most common proxy for plant diversity during the Holocene. Based on datasets in open, forest, and mixed habitats, we used the spatial distribution of floristic diversity to estimate the source area of pollen diversity and identify factors influencing the significance of this relationship. Our study areas are Boh...

We analysed a continuous andwell-dated record of pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, geochemistry and plant macroremains from the best preserved peat bog in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands (Czech Republic). Dářko peat bog is an isolated site of a pine bog woodland dominated by the central-European endemic Pinus uncinata subsp. uliginosa. It is protect...

Montane biomes are niche environments high in biodiversity with a variety of habitats. Often isolated, these non-continuous remnant ecosystems inhabit narrow ecological zones putting them under threat from changing climatic conditions and anthropogenic pressure. Twelve sediment cores were retrieved from a peat bog in Tatra National Park, Slovakia,...

Wildfire occurrence is influenced by climate, vegetation and human activities. A key challenge for understanding fire-climate-vegetation interactions is to quantify the effect vegetation has in mediating fire regime. Here, we explore the relative importance of Holocene land cover and dominant functional forest type, and climate dynamics on biomass...

Wildfire occurrence is influenced by climate, vegetation and human activities. A key challenge for understanding the risk of fires is quantifying the mediating effect of vegetation on fire regimes. Here, we explore the relative importance of Holocene land cover, land use, dominant functional forest type, and climate dynamics on biomass burning in t...

In contrast to marked climate change across glacial-interglacial cycles, the Holocene epoch represents a relatively warm, stable interval. However, on finer temporal scales, it too has experienced both gradual and rapid changes in climate. In the North Atlantic region, many rapid climate changes (RCCs) coincide with ice-rafted debris (IRD) or Bond...

Fire occurrence is driven by a complex interplay between vegetation, climatic, landform and human factors making it challenging to separate the individual effect of each variable. Here we present a reconstruction of the Holocene biomass burning history of two regions located in the Central European temperate zone that differ in the timing of the Mi...

Delší časová perspektiva nám umožňuje lépe pochopit současnou strukturu ekosystémů a jejich diverzitu. Paleoekologie se zabývá studiem vztahů mezi organismy a rekonstrukcí ekosystémů v geologické minulosti na časových škálách stovek či tisíců let. V článku si představíme různé pohledy na fungování přírody z hlediska její přirozenosti, kterou můžeme...

Norway spruce is a dominant keystone species in the montane coniferous forests in central Europe, with important ecological and commercial value. Natural disturbances such as wind throws and bark beetle outbreaks have caused major losses in these forests in the last few decades and are becoming more frequent and severe. Holeksa et al. (2016) create...

Abstract: Many oceanic islands have undergone dramatic ecological changes during the last few centuries. Human activities and exotic species have so greatly modifed the landscapes of these islands that the original vegetation is difficult to imagine. Areas of remnant vegetation are therefore used as baselines for restoration. But how representative...

The Bohemian Forest (Šumava Mts.) lakes are situated along the Czech-German-Austrian border. In addition to the existing eight glacial lakes, other eight infilled lakes were found so far. These sites represent important natural archives, allowing reconstructions of past environmental changes since the end of the last deglaciation. Although these se...

The Eemian interglacial represents a natural experiment on how past vegetation with negligible human impact responded to amplified temperature changes compared to the Holocene. Here, we assemble 47 carefully selected Eemian pollen sequences from Europe to explore geographical patterns of (1) total compositional turnover and total variation for each...

Local quillwort (Isoëtes sp.) populations have slowly diminished since the Last Ice Age and are thus considered endangered in many Central European countries. Based on direct observation and field experiments, many recent ecological studies have proposed several hypothetical causes of the decline in quillwort populations across Europe. Unfortunatel...

The population boom-and-bust during the European Neolithic (7000–2000 BC) has been the subject of lively discussion for the past decade. Most of the research on this topic was carried out with help of summed radiocarbon probability distributions. We aim to reconstruct population dynamics within the catchment of a medium sized lake on the basis of i...

This study investigated the long-term role and drivers of fire in the central European temperate spruce-beech forests from Pr a silsk e jezero, Czech Republic. The results illustrate the complex relationship between broad-scale climate, vegetation composition, and local human activities on fire throughout the Holocene. Biomass burning was the highe...

It is generally accepted that history is important for understanding patterns in plant community structure and diversity. However, “history” comprises anything from the evolutionary history of plants over millions of years to land‐use change over years or decades. The same ambiguity applies to the usage of “long‐term”, which is frequently found in...

Multiproxy palaeoecological evidence from a sandstone region in northern Czech Republic was collected to explore the impact of fire disturbances on the decline of the broadleaved forests during the Late Bronze Age (3250–3050 cal. BP). It has been hypothesized that human-accelerated soil leaching affected the nutrient availability in the sandstone a...

In 1927, the first pollen diagram was published from the Bohemian/Bavarian Forest region of Central Europe, providing one of the first qualitative views of the long-term vegetation development in the region. Since then significant methodological advances in quantitative approaches such as pollen influx and pollen-based vegetation models (e.g., Land...

A long-term perspective is a crucial dimension for understanding the present-day composition and structure of the Czech flora and vegetation. We outline processes that were important for the development of the present-day diversity of flora and vegetation including extinctions of taxa and ecological mechanisms operating within glacial-interglacial...

Significant changes in vegetation cover took place during the Holocene on the territory of the Czech Switzerland National Park. This evolution resulted in the most developed broadleaf deciduous forests, which expanded into Central Europe during mid-Holocene climatic optimum. These transformations are caused by climatic changes. However, it started...

Aim: To test competing hypotheses about the timing and extent of Holocene landscape opening using pollen-based quantitative land-cover estimates. Location: Dove Lake, Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, Australia. Methods: Fossil pollen data were incorporated into pollen dispersal models and corrected for differences in pollen productivity...

The primary aim of this paper is to provide a pollen-based quantitative reconstruction of Holo-cene vegetation in order to update a perspective on natural vegetation in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. As a secondary aim we compare composition of this reconstructed Holocene vegetation with the composition of potential natural vegetation (PNV sensu...

The European Pollen Database (EPD) is a community effort to archive and make available pollen sequences from across the European continent. Pollen sequences provide records that may be used to infer past vegetation and vegetation change. We present here maps based on 828 sites from the EPD giving an overview of changes in postglacial pollen assembl...

As with many oceanic archipelagos, Azorean ecosystems were subject to intense anthropogenic impacts following the islands’ colonisation in the 15th century. The degree of habitat modification on some islands has been so great that it is difficult to imagine the pre-colonial biota, let alone understand its ecology. On the Azores, historical descript...

Forests cover approximately one third of Central Europe. Based on a century of research tradition in phytosociology, potential vegetation mapping and palynology, oak (Quercus sp.) and European beech (Fagus sylvatica) are considered to be the natural dominants at low and middle altitudes, respectively. By contrast, currently many coniferous forests...

Records of past climate variability and associated vegetation response exist in various regions throughout Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). To date, there has been no coherent synthesis of the existing palaeorecords. During an INTIMATE meeting (Cluj Napoca, Romania) focused on identifying CEE paleo-records, it was decided to address this gap by pr...

Using a multi-proxy analysis of a postglacial sedimentary sequence from a lowland wetland, we address the possible drivers of change in the wetland habitats and surrounding landscapes of southwestern Slovakia. A 5 m-deep core in the Parížske močiare marshes was investigated for pollen, plant macro-remains, molluscs, organic content and magnetic sus...

We present quantitative reconstructions of regional vegetation cover in north-western Europe, western Europe north of the Alps, and eastern Europe for five time windows in the Holocene (around 6k, 3k, 0.5k, 0.2k, and 0.05k calendar years before present (BP)) at a 1° x 1° spatial scale with the objective of producing vegetation descriptions suitable...

The REVEALS model is a tool for recalculating pollen data into vegetation abundances on a regional scale. We explored the general effect of selected parameters by performing simulations and ascertained the best model setting for the Czech Republic using the shallowest samples from 120 fossil sites and data on actual regional vegetation (60 km radiu...

Ecology and Quaternary palaeoecology have largely developed as parallel disciplines. Although both pursue related questions, information exchange is often hampered by particularities of the palaeoecological data and a communication gap has been perceived between the disciplines. Based on selected topics and developments mainly in Quaternary palaeoe...

This study aims to evaluate the direct effects of anthropogenic deforestation on simulated climate at two contrasting periods in the Holocene, ~6 and ~0.2 k BP in Europe. We apply We apply the Rossby Centre regional climate model RCA3, a regional climate model with 50 km spatial resolution, for both time periods, considering three alternative descr...

Background/aims: Recently, new palaeoecological records supported by molecular analyses and palaeodistributional modelling have provided more comprehensive insights into plant behaviour during the last Quaternary cycle. We reviewed the migration history of species of subgenus Alnus during the last 50,000 years in Europe with a focus on (1) a gener...

The number of well-dated pollen diagrams in Europe has increased considerably over the last 30 years and many of them have been submitted to the European Pollen Database (EPD). This allows for the construction of increasingly precise maps of Holocene vegetation change across the continent. Chronological information in the EPD has been expressed in...

Modern pollen samples provide an invaluable research tool for helping to interpret the Quaternary fossil pollen record, allowing investigation of the relationship between pollen as the proxy and the environmental parameters such as vegetation, land-use, and climate that the pollen proxy represents. The European Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) is a ne...

This study aims to evaluate the direct effects of anthropogenic deforestation on simulated climate at two contrasting periods in the Holocene, ~6 k BP and ~0.2 k BP in Europe. We apply RCA3, a regional climate model with 50 km spatial resolution, for both time periods, considering three alternative descriptions of the past vegetation: (i) potential...

Previously only three terrestrial interglacial periods were known from southern Scandinavia, all of which could be relatively easily correlated within the central European stratigraphical framework. Here, we present a new interglacial–interstadial pollen, plant macrofossil and charcoal record from Trelde Klint, Denmark, and analyse its biostratigra...

The issue of continuity in deciduous oakwood vegetation has been in the forefront of woodland ecological studies for many decades. The two basic questions that emerge from existing research are whether or not oakwoods can be characterized by long-term stability and what may be the driving forces of the observed stability or change. To answer these...

Palaeoclimatic stability is regarded as an important factor in explaining patterns of end-emism in the Azorean flora. However, modelling simulations and quantitative reconstructions for the last 6000 years suggest considerable palaeoclimatic variability. Here we explore the link between Holocene palaeoclimate and palaeovegetation on the islands of...

REVEALS-based quantitative reconstruction of Holocene vegetation cover (expressed in plant functional types, PFTs) is used in the LANDCLIM project to assess the effect of human-induced land-cover change on past climate in NW Europe. Using the Czech Quaternary Pollen Database, this case study evaluates the extent to which selection of data and input...

Modern Czech research of Mesolithic settlements in pseudo-karst rock shelters started in 1951, with the work of F. Prošek and V. Ložek at Zátyní (Prošek, Ložek 1952). This was the first time the Mesolithic had been identified in an excavation in the Czech Republic. The material from this site has now been dated. Mesolithic settlement in the Český r...

Aim Observations of long chronosequences in forest ecosystems show that, after some millennia of build-up, biomass declines in relation to the slow depletion of soil phosphorus. Plants that dominate during this period of soil impoverishment have specialized strategies for P acquisition, including ectomycorrhiza or root clusters. We use quantitative...

After the last glaciation, around 4000 BC, silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) spread to the area that is now the Czech Republic. This spread was not restricted to high mountains, but also took place across both highland and lowland landscapes. Historical forestry records from around AD 1500 mention a massive expansion of Abies alba, favoured by forest p...

The major objectives of this paper are: (1) to review the pros and cons of the scenarios of past anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) developed during the last ten years, (2) to discuss issues related to pollen-based reconstruction of the past land-cover and introduce a new method, REVEALS (Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Si...

Quantitative estimates of land-cover changes during the Holocene have become increasingly important for a better understanding of the earth surface-atmosphere feedbacks, and refining climate models. The LANDCLIM project and research network (sponsored by the Swedish [VR] and Nordic [NordForsk] Research Councils) aim to quantify human-induced change...

The major objectives of this paper are: (1) to review the pros and cons of the scenarios of past anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) developed during the last ten years, (2) to discuss issues related to pollen-based reconstruction of the past land-cover and introduce a new method, REVEALS (Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Si...

Investigations of the Schwarzenberg Lake constantly bring important data on vegetation, landscape development, and human occu- pation since the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. Great scientific potential of the area base on conditions suitable for both palaeoen- vironmental and archaeological research. This article is an attempt to summarize curren...

The major objectives of this paper are: (1) to review the pros and cons of the scenarios of past anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) developed during the last ten years, (2) to discuss issues related to pollen-based reconstruction of the past land-cover and introduce a new method, REVEALS (Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Si...

Site details: The raised bog Fláje-Kiefern (50°429N, 13°329 E; 760 m a.s.l.; size ca. 500x500 m) lies in the Krusné Hory Mountains (Erzgebirge), Czech Republic, about 10 km from Georgenfelder Moor in Germany. Hejny and Slavík (1988) described the phytogeographic region of the Krusne Hory Mountains as 'a region of mountain flora and vegetation, with...

This paper reviews the data on quaternary palynological sequences collected in the Czech Republic, attempts to store them in the Czech Quaternary Palynological Database (PALYCZ) and outlines a possible use for regional syntheses. Work on pollen stratigraphies done over the last hundred years has yielded a very large amount of data for this region....

This paper reviews the data on quaternary palynological sequences collected in the Czech Republic, attempts to store them in the Czech Quaternary Palynological Database (PALYCZ) and outlines a possible use for regional syntheses. Work on pollen stratigraphies done over the last hundred years has yielded a very large amount of data for this region....

Pollen stratigraphies are the most spatially extensive data available for the reconstruction of past land-cover change. Detailed knowledge of past land-cover is becoming increasingly important to evaluate the present trends in, and drivers of, vegetation composition. The European Pollen Database (EPD) was established in the late 1980s and developed...

We studied the relationships between surface pollen spectra, vegetation and selected climate characteristics along a strong gradient of climate continentality across the Western Sayan Mountains, southern Siberia. Representation of 111 pollen taxa in 81 surface samples from steppe, forest and tundra was related to the vegetation composition at vario...

Aim Interpretation of fossil pollen assemblages may benefit greatly from comparisons with modern palynological and vegetation analogues. To interpret the full‐ and late‐glacial vegetation in eastern‐central Europe we compared fossil pollen assemblages from this region with modern pollen assemblages from various vegetation types in southern Siberia,...

Pollen data from the Czech Republic was used to detect the early Holocene impact of hunter-gatherers on vegetation based on a selection of 19 early Holocene pollen profiles, complemented with archaeological information regarding the intensity of local and regional Mesolithic human habitation. Archaeological evidence was assigned to simple categorie...