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Spruce forest is an important production ecosystem for our civilization. Its development can be affected by three main types of disturbances: forest fire, windstorms and spruce bark beetle attack. Experiences with a massive and long-term attack of spruce bark beetle in the Šumava mountains and a strong windstorm in 2004 in the spruce forest in the High Tatra provoke questions, how natural are such severe disturbances. To understand the current development of forest ecosystems, it is necessary to study past structure of these forests and frequency of forest disturbances. This work is about locality Tatranská Lomnice located in the High Tatra mountains, in the belt of mountain spruce forest. In my work, I used mainly pollen and plant macro-fossils analyses. I compared my data with disturbance information originating from dendroecology for windstorms and from charcoal analysis for fires. My research found that according to the pollen assemblages, most of the disturbances did not have strong influence on the forest composition, and most likely they only caused the forest thinning. The most significant fire occurred around 1420. The most significant wind disturbance probably occurred in 1890. The was not found any effect of spruce bark beetle. In the past millennium disturbances affected spruce forest...

The aims of the thesis were to document the history of the Cladocera (Crustacea) community structure in the Starolesnianske Lake (the High Tatra Mountains, Slovakia) with regards to environmental changes (e. g., Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age, anthropogenic acidification, recovery from acidification), and to analyze in detail the development of zooplankton (Cladocera, Copepoda, Rotifera) during the peaking acidification and recovery from acidification (1978 - 2015). Based on results of both the approaches, the appropriateness of using historical data on zooplankton in Tatra lakes between 1909 - 1913 (Minkiewicz, 1914) as a reference condition for the evaluating biological recovery from acidification should have been assessed. The methods used were paleolimnological analyses of lake sediment (namely subfossil Cladocera), analysis of recent zooplankton, and analyses of lake water chemistry. It was found that in the historical record, relative abundances of Cladocera species significantly changed cca 150 years ago (at the end of the Little Ice Age and, in the main, in the period of anthropogenic acidification). The lake, though, has had a very stable species composition of Cladocera during the last cca 2,000 years, represented by four species: Alona quadrangularis, Alonella excisa, Ceriodaphnia...

The aim of this diploma thesis was to describe species composition and biomass of phytoplankton in the Tatra Mountains lakes (Slovakia, Poland) and environmental factors influencing them. The surface layer of 89 lakes was sampled in September 2004. Flagellates from Chrysophyta, Dinophyta and Cryptophyta most frequently dominated the phytoplankton biomass. Lake in the same valley usually differed in their dominant taxonomic group as a result of different lake morphometry, catchment type and detailed geological structure. Based on the level of phytoplankton biovolume, the majority of lakes were ultraoligotrophic and oligotrophic, however, mesotrophic and even eutrophic conditions were recorded in some forest and meadow lakes. An allometric relationship between phytoplankton biomass and chlorophyll a was revealed. Specific chlorophyll content did not differ among taxonomic groups. Altogether 233 species were determined, the most diverse group were Chlorophyta. Species richness of lake was 3-46 and it was negatively correlated with altitude and positively correlated with lake area. The majority of species were rare both in term of biomass and number of lakes occupied by a particular species. Average local species biomass was positively correlated with regional distribution. The similarity of species...

This thesis is the first of its kind that evaluates the species composition, species richness and species abundance of zooplankton in littoral samples of 90 Tatras lakes (Western and High Tatras of Slovakia and Poland) collected in September 2004 in the context of environmental parameters of lakes and spatial relationships of individual lakes. The most frequently occurring species in the Tatras lakes in 2004 were also evaluated in terms of their occurrence in the lakes a century ago (Minkiewicz 1914, 1917 and Lityński 1913, 1917), during the period of acidification (Ertl & Vranovský 1964, Ertl et al. 1965, Hrbáček et al. 1974, Stuchlík et al. 1985) and during the period of recovery of the lakes from acidification (Hořická et al. 2006, Sacherová et al. 2006). Relationships between variables were analysed using Poisson regression, cluster analysis with multinomial regression, canonical correspondence analysis, Mantel tests and multiple negative binomial regression. Using analyses, lakes were divided into four clusters (A, B, C, D). Each cluster consisted of lakes with the same environmental and spatial factors and similar species composition. Thirteen zooplankton species (Acanthocyclops vernalis, Acroperus harpae, Alona affinis, Arctodiaptomus alpinus, Ceriodaphnia quadrangula, Cyclops abyssorum...