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Vegetation history of chernozems in the Czech Republic

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Abstract

Chernozem is a soil type which can be characterised by a thick dark surface horizon, which consists of organic matter and tends to change into a carbonate horizon or more often into a loess horizon. Chernozem is defined as a zonal soil that has developed under steppe vegetation in a dry continental climate. Nevertheless, chernozems can also be found in central Europe, where there are no climatic conditions for the existence of any steppe. This study is focused on the vegetational aspect of the pedogenesis of chernozems. We have examined three sorts of chernozems for their charcoal and pedological characteristics: the functional chernozems, the chernozems buried in Holocene material and the chernozems buried in Pleistocene material. The charcoal examination has proved the presence of woodland taxa in the areas of chernozems at different periods of time. The results of this study reveal that the high stability of soil organic matter has caused the persistence of chernozems in the areas with prevalent woodland vegetation.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Charles University Project SVV 265-212 and the OBRESOC Project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR-09-CEP-004-01/OBRESOC) for their financial support. We thank the Laboratoire de Mesure du Carbone 14, UMS 2572, ARTEMIS in Saclay for AMS 14C measurements. Further, the authors thank CEA, CNRS, IRD, IRSN and Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. We also express our appreciation to Dagmar Dreslerová, Jaroslava Sobocká, Emil Fulajtar, Libor Petr for their kind help during the field work. We also thank Martin Stehlík very much for drawing the map. Last but not least, we thank both anonymous reviewers for their beneficial remarks and the guest editors for the publication of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physical Geography and Geoecology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Albertov 6, 128 43, Praha 2, Czech Republic

    Barbora Vysloužilová, Lenka Danková & Luděk Šefrna

  2. Laboratoire Image, Ville, Environnement, UMR 7362, CNRS/Université de Strasbourg, 3, rue de l’Argonne, 67083, Strasbourg Cedex, France

    Barbora Vysloužilová, Damien Ertlen & Dominique Schwartz

  3. Laboratory of Archaeobotany and Paleoecology, Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Branišovská 31, 370 05, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Jan Novák

  4. CNRS-UMR7264 CEPAM/Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, Campus Saint Jean d’Angely 3 24 avenue des Diables bleus, 06357, Nice Cedex 4, France

    Claire Delhon

  5. Faculté Ghhat, UMR 5600 EVS du CNRS, Université Lyon 2, 5 Avenue Pierre Mendès-France, 69676, Bron Cedex, France

    Jean-François Berger

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  1. Barbora Vysloužilová
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Correspondence to Barbora Vysloužilová.

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Communicated by R. Gerlach.

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Vysloužilová, B., Danková, L., Ertlen, D. et al. Vegetation history of chernozems in the Czech Republic. Veget Hist Archaeobot 23 (Suppl 1), 97–108 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-014-0441-7

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