This thesis describes the shift in vegetation of broadleaf forests in eastern part of the Elbe River Basin between 1958-1968 and 2011-2013. It emphasizes the understorey vegetation. From lowland woodlands in other temperate regions in Europe and North America changes towards eutrophic and mesophytic vegetation are documented, specifically driven by changes in forest management and by atmospheric depositions; in some localities the game impact can be also important. The data were obtained by sampling 190 typological semi-permanent plots, which were precisely located - in 43% the original soil pit was found. The vegetation on study sites shifted towards nutrient-demanding, shade- adapted species, it was partly ruderalized. These changes can be seen on the level of species and communities as well as on phytosociological level. Increase of soil pH and moisture was discovered using Ellenberg indicator values. The number of seedlings and cover of shrubs also increased significantly. Homogenization of sites was significant as well although total number of species and alpha- diversity remained unchanged. These changes are probably caused by changes in forest management and by atmospheric depositions of nitrogen. On subset of plots in game-preserves the vegetation also demonstrated eutrophication but no increase in...

Les artisans-paysans forestiers et les pasteurs constituent toute une frange de la population des campagnes médiévales qui se caractérise et se différencie de ses contemporains par son mode de vie itinérant et son implantation temporaire dans l'inculte. Marginalisée dans l'imaginaire collectif médiéval, elle est oubliée par l'historiographie, à cause de la dispersion et la fugacité des traces qu'elle laisse dans la documentation écrite et archéologique. Ce mode de vie itinérant découle de la pratique d'une activité fondée sur l'exploitation de ressources végétales ou animales, le plus souvent saisonnières, dont la répartition spatiale est, par définition, hors de l'espace cultivé, en marge des terroirs villageois. La mobilité des usagers de l'inculte revêt différentes formes et engendre par conséquent l'adoption de différentes stratégies résidentielles en fonction des activités : du simple mouvement pendulaire résidence-lieu de production jusqu'à l'implantation temporaire sur le lieu de production, au plus proche des ressources pour la durée de la saison d'exploitation. La construction d'habitat temporaire est le fruit de la conjugaison de contraintes techniques (chaîne opératoire technique, temps opératoire, surveillance des processus...), écologiques, temporelles, spatiales, et enfin réglementaires. / Woodlands craftsmen and shepherds make up a whole section of medieval rural population which is characterized and differentiated from its contemporaries by their itinerant lifestyle and their temporary settlement in the incultum. They are marginalized by medieval collective imagination and they have been forgotten by the historians, because their traces in written and archaeological sources are too scattered. Their mobility and their residential strategies depend on the exploitation of available seasonal resources, be it vegetal or animal. These seasonal resources are naturally found away from the areas already cultivated by local village people. This itinerant lifestyle takes on different forms, and results in different strategies from a pendular motion home-workplace to temporary establishment near to the raw materials during the season of exploitation. A temporary stay is determined by technical constraints (technical process and operational time), and also by environmental, time and law factors. Technology, time and space are connected, so it's necessary to study the « temporary dwelling » system as a whole from technical processes to social life, via the temporary encampments, which are the materialization of the way of life; this through a historical, archaeological and ethnoarchaeological cross-study

This thesis examines Woodland settlement patterns at the Brickhill Bluff site on Cumberland Island, Georgia. Aspects of Woodland habitation and social organization are not well understood along the Georgia coast. Using shell and artifact distribution data from excavations at Brickhill Bluff, this thesis attempts to discern how Woodland populations, specifically Deptford and St. Johns cultures, utilized the site between 1000 B.C. and A.D. 1000. This study also examines the efficacy of the midden typology already established for the South Atlantic Coastal Plain by statistically comparing the artifact assemblage from Brickhill Bluff to samples from sites used to develop this midden typology. The aims of this research are to identify past cultural activities at Brickhill Bluff - specifically seasonal oyster collecting, general hunting and gathering strategies, and residential density. These criteria are compared with an established matrix designed to discern how past groups utilized southeastern coastal shell midden sites. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This study tested the performance of classification, regression, and ordination techniques to evaluate the spatiotemporal dynamics of threats to big sagebrush ecological sites. The research was focused on invasion by annual exotic grasses and encroachment by woodlands. We sought to identify those areas that have had a persistent coverage of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) in big sagebrush ecological sites. We took advantage of the contrast in greenness between multi-temporal (within one year) remotely sensed vegetation indices captured in the spring and summer to find a distinct phenological signature that allowed mapping cheatgrass. We utilized support vector machines (SVM) to classify three temporal scenarios for which field data sets were available. SVM performed very well with accuracies of 70% (producer's) and 95% (user's) for the class of interest (presence of cheatgrass). This was the focus of chapter 2. In chapter 3 we report the development of vegetation continuous fields (VCF) for three years of interest 1996, 2001, and 2007 in order to detect active woodland encroachment. We prepared VCF for shrubs, trees, herbaceous vegetation, and bare ground using a suite of remotely sensed spectral reflectance, vegetation indices, and transformations. We compared the performance of multivariate regression trees (MRT) and random forests (RF) to develop the VCF multi-temporal series. RF outperformed MRT in both accuracy and ability to appropriately map the continuum of percent cover across large landscapes. We estimate that 17,570 hectares of big sagebrush lands showed encroachment by woodlands. Our goal in chapter 4 was to develop a similarity index for large rangeland landscapes. Trend assessments field sites and a long-term annual series (1984 - 2008) of remotely sensed imagery were used in conjunction with multidimensional scaling (MDS) to measure ecological distance to undesired states such as invasion by exotic annuals and encroachment by woodlands. In this chapter our units of analysis were soil-mapping units, which were predominantly composed of one ecological site (>60%). Our MDS results show that different ecological sites can be identified in the reduced MDS statistical space. The observed transitions and trajectories of mountain, Wyoming, and basin big sagebrush sites correlated well with the ecological expectation in semiarid lands. We anticipate that managers can use our protocols to update ecological site descriptions and state and transition models from a remotely sensed perspective.

The research undertaken in this dissertation was designed to explore how the institutionalized social inequalities in prehistoric Woodland society are reflected in the differences in the procurement, in the life history, and the final discard locations of the flaked chert stone tools from the Crystal River site (8CI1). The Woodland period (1000 BC to AD 1000) was a time of both stability and change in Native American society. Many of the core institutions such as subsistence, hunting and ceramic technology, and residence remained relatively constant while religious and political institutions underwent dramatic changes. This study focuses on how these social inequalities were manifested in the chipped stone tool assemblage from this site. The Crystal River site is an Early to Middle Woodland-period mound complex located in coastal Citrus County, Florida. Dedicated as a National Historic Landmark site in 1991, the Crystal River site is internationally known and respected. Despite extensive work at the site conducted by Bullen and others during the 1940-60s, little was actually published about the material remains excavated from the site. Work resumed on the site in the 1980s and has continued as required by park maintenance and repair issues. Since 2007, remote sensing and other non-invasive technologies have been employed to advance research further at the site. This research returned to the flaked stone materials recovered during the periods 1903-1964 and 1984-2001 to illuminate site activities better without additional ground-disturbing activities. Multiple techniques were employed to develop the data sets that were used to investigate the research questions addressed in this study. The GIS-based weights-of-evidence procedure was used to predict the locations of chert outcrops within a 50 km study area. This model validated the existing quarry cluster method of determining the provenience of Florida cherts. A cost-path analysis was used to identify those chert sources that would have been most accessible to the site's inhabitants. These techniques defined a series of coastal chert outcrops that form the newly-proposed New Coastal quarry cluster. A chaîne opératoire or operational sequence approach was adopted for the analysis of the chipped stone assemblage. A waste flake analysis, a hafted biface classification, and a raw material provenience classification were conducted for all flaked-stone materials. Use-wear determinations were made using both low-power (10-70x) and high-power (50-400x) magnification analysis techniques. A life history approach was taken to the hafted biface assemblage and hafted biface retouch index (HRI) values were determined for all hafted bfaces and biface fragments. The provenience analysis demonstrated that the majority of the chert used by the inhabitants of Crystal River came from outcrops and quarries south of the site along the coastal marshes and the western margins of the Brooksville Ridge. These resources are all within a short canoe trip from the site. Two life history trajectories are suggested for the chipped stone tools from Crystal River. The majority of the chert was obtained from local sources. The second life history was defined for a small subset of the hafted bifaces that were transported from quarries located outside the core subsistence catchment of Crystal River site. Four research hypotheses were developed to test propositions related to the ways in which institutionalized social inequalities are reflected in the patterning of the chipped stone artifact assemblage at the Crystal River site. Although only some of these hypotheses were supported, the results of this investigation do support much of the research that has previously been conducted with the lithic assemblages from Woodland mound complexes in Florida. Chert acquisition is heavily reliant on local lithic sources. Chert procurement appears to be embedded in the collection of other resources. Stone tool use at the site follows the typical expedient flake tool/local raw material pattern that has been documented for other Middle Woodland sites in the region. There was no evidence to suggest that thermal alteration was used to enhance the quality of either the local cherts or those brought to the site from more distant sources. The analysis identified two distinct life histories for at least part of the stone tool assemblage. Many of the hafted bifaces, formed tools and flake tools recovered from the site were made from local cherts. These tool where likely made, used, and discarded at Crystal River. Some of the hafted bifaces and flake cores were made from cherts found on the outer edges of the 50 km study area defined for this investigation. These items were brought to the Crystal River site, used, resharpened, and broken in transit, and finally replaced by new tools at the site. The broken fragments of these tools were discarded in the midden debris to eventually become part of the archaeological record from this now-famous site.

Many bat species in Europe have undergone severe population declines during the last century and one of the driving causes is believed to be the loss of roosting and foraging habitat through agricultural expansion and intensification. Modern agricultural practices have also had strong negative effects on many insect groups, such as moths, which are important components of the diets of many bat species. Agri-environment schemes (AES) have been introduced in many countries as an attempt to counteract the negative effects of intensive agriculture on biodiversity by providing financial incentives for farmers to adopt environmentally-sensitive agricultural practices. AES are potentially beneficial to bats and nocturnal insects, but the response of these taxa to their implementation had not been assessed prior to this study. Here, the potential benefits (or otherwise) that bats and their insect prey species gain from the implementation of certain AES management prescriptions was assessed using ultrasonic detectors (to assess bat activity levels) and heath light traps (to quantify nocturnal insect abundance) at 18 pairs of AES and conventionally-managed farms. In addition, the influence of the surrounding landscape on bats and insects was quantified to evaluate the relevance of a landscape-scale management approach for the conservation of these taxa. Some of the AES prescriptions assessed in this study benefited moths (and are potentially beneficial for moth-eating bats), but not Pipistrelle bats nor their insect prey. The most important factors associated with bat activity on farmland were metrics related to woodland configuration in the surrounding landscape, which suggests that conservation efforts for bats should focus on the creation and management of this habitat. Currently, some AES prescriptions aim to increase the amount and quality of woodland on agricultural land, but little is known about how woodland character relates to bat abundance and insect prey availability; therefore, recommendations for woodland creation and management rarely consider the requirements of foraging bats. Here, the influence of woodland character (e.g. vegetation structure and patch configuration) on bats and nocturnal insects was assessed. Vegetation surveys were conducted and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were used to quantify the vegetation character and spatial configuration of 34 woodland patches within farmland. Two complementary methods (acoustic monitoring and bat trapping assisted by an acoustic lure) were used to assess the influence of woodland vegetation character, patch configuration and the surrounding landscape on bat populations. Nocturnal insect abundance at each site was assessed using heath light traps. Data presented here demonstrate that bats show species-specific associations with woodland vegetation structure and patch configuration; patterns of higher bat abundance and activity at small and isolated woodland patches suggest that bats utilize this habitat more intensively in landscapes where woodland is scarce. This thesis also shows that moths are strongly influenced by woodland character; in general, large woodland patches of compact shapes, composed of a large number of native tree species and a dense understory cover, and located close to other woodlands were associated with high moth abundance and species richness (and are potentially valuable for moth-eating bats). Other nocturnal insects (mainly Diptera) were not influenced by woodland character. This study also shows that bats and nocturnal insects are influenced by the landscape context; moths are mainly influenced by the extent of semi-natural environment (such as rough grassland and scrub) within small spatial scales (within 250 m; although effects of woodland extent were detected at larger spatial scales for woodland specialists moths). Bats are mainly influenced by woodland-related landscape metrics. Some bat species are influenced by the surrounding landscape at large spatial scales (within 3 km) and would benefit from woodland creation and management at a wide-landscape-scale. The findings presented in this thesis have important management implications for the design of agri-environment schemes. A list of management recommendations to optimize the benefits that bats and nocturnal insects gain from these schemes is presented in the final section.

No description available.

Lately, after Lithuania’s admission to a big unit of countries - the European Union, one of the most important tasks while implementing negotiated EU membership commitments in on country in the establishment of NATURA 2000 the network of protected areas that is of the European significance. In the process of the establishment of the network the system of the protected areas is being changed, new protected areas NATURA 2000 are being created reservations, and biosphere polygons. While implementing the Lithuanian Republic strategy of biological variety protection and it’s plan of actions valuable woodland biotopes, woodland key habitats are distinguished. Namely here, in small woodland areas the biology variety is especially wide and the protection of such territories is a mattes of primary interest. To meet the requirements big change have taken place in the regional park of Tytuvėnai as well. Study object. Territory of the Tytuvėnai regional park. The aim of the study is to determine the territories of NATURA 2000 and the woodland key habitats, to evaluate them preliminarily, to determine the peculiarity of them distribution in the area, and to estimate the variation of the natural protected areas of the existing regional park of Tytuvėnai and in it’s draft version. Study methodology. In the analysis of the protected areas the data from the data basis of the Forest and Land Service organizations was used. To determine the territories of NATURA 2000 The Guide of the habitats... [to full text]

Access to abstract permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Theoretical background -- Environmental setting -- Prehistory within the Upper Wabash River Valley -- Data sets -- Results -- Discussion and conclusion. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Department of Anthropology

Archaeological test excavations were conducted at 12Vi194 (Northwood Site) in a portion of the site where residential development is planned or has taken place. Thirty four 2x2 m units were excavated to the base of midden deposits, exposing eight features. Six of these features proved to be of aboriginal origin, with their terminal function as refuse pits. Materials recovered from the site span some 4000 years, from the Late Archaic period through the Late Woodland period. The majority of materials, as well as all aboriginal features, date to the late Middle Woodland Allison-LaMotte culture (AD 100-600), and include ten Lowe Flared base projectile points, 1700+ pieces of lithic debris, 4500 ceramic sherds, a vast quantity of floral and faunal debris, and the remains of one badly deteriorated human interment (pre-natal infant).The investigations at this site were carried out to assess the significance of the deposits. Based on the quantity of artifacts, size and density of pit features and well defined midden deposits, this site is considered significant and therefore eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places (see Appendix). Due to developers plans on this and adjacent sites, a management plan outlining future impacts and lternatives is also provided. / Department of Anthropology