Správa Krkonošského Národního Parku

Forest management plans offer valuable data on forest species composition and structure, useful for large-scale bird conservation. We examined the relationship between bird community diversity and five vegetation characteristics from management plans in Krkonoše Mts. National Park. Bird communities were surveyed from 2012 to 2014 using the point method on 285 plots (radius 100 m). We analyzed songbirds, woodpeckers, and pigeons. The vegetation characteristics were divided into composition (tree species proportion, soil-based phytocoenosis, and target vegetation type) and structure (vertical tree layering and remotely sensed heights). Bird species richness was used as a diversity measure. Redundancy analysis (RDA) tested the impact of vegetation characteristics on bird community composition. Higher bird diversity was linked to deciduous forests, particularly beech, in multi-layered stands (20–40 m height) on rich soils. In contrast, lower diversity occurred in spruce-dominated stands with Scots pine, waterlogged soils, and low vegetation (<0.5 m). All vegetation characteristics correlated significantly with bird community diversity and composition. Our findings demonstrate that forest management data can help identify key variability sources in bird communities, aiding in large-scale monitoring and landscape planning. Beyond tree composition and structure, phytocoenological characteristics provide useful insights for conservation.

A cyclic economy and sustainability-driven production are key aspects of the industry. Recycled feedstocks are steadily replacing virgin materials to produce parts and as sustainable additives to develop eco-friendly composites. The reinforcing potential of recycled fine powder glass (FPG) on terephthalate glycol (PETG) is investigated. The performances of six different compounds (with FPG loadings of 2.0, 4.0, 6.0, 8.0, 10.0, and 12.0 wt%) in filament and three-dimensional (3D) specimens form (manufactured with the material extrusion – MEX method) were compared with PETG pure. This research included thermal and rheological analyses, mechanical tests, and morphological and structural investigations. According to these findings, the PETG/RFPG 8.0 wt% composite presented remarkable results in the tensile and flexural (16.3 % and 16.9 % strength increase, respectively) tests, while PETG/RFPG 10.0 wt% had the greatest performance concerning microhardness. Both the dimensional deviation and porosity results show excellent performance in the case of PETG/RFPG 6.0 wt%, by being 67.3 % and 87.1 % improved vs. the PETG pure. These results indicate that RFPG is a promising reinforcement additive for MEX 3D printing that can replace the commonly used inorganic fillers and promote the sustainability of 3D printing.

The updated checklist of the bryophyte flora of Albania (SE Europe), with the addition of eighteen new records (and several regional ones) presented here, comprises 583 taxa (species, subspecies, varieties) representing 212 genera and 96 families.The main list includes tabular distributional data by region.Reports after 1950 are differentiated from the earlier ones.The list is organized taxonomically (hornworts, liverworts and mosses) and in alphabetical order within each division.Updated synonymy and a systematic synopsis are presented at the end.

Artykuł stanowi próbę subiektywnej oceny działalności Rzecznika Finansowego. Celem artykułu jest analiza oraz omówienie tematyki realizacji zadań Rzecznika Finansowego w oparciu o sprawozdania z działalności Rzecznika Finansowego, orzecznictwo Sądu Najwyższego, Trybunału Sprawiedliwości Unii Europejskiej oraz opracowania doktryny.

The bark beetle (Ips typographus) disturbance represents serious environmental and economic issue and presents a major challenge for forest management. A timely detection of bark beetle infestation is therefore necessary to reduce losses. Besides wood production, a bark beetle outbreak affects the forest ecosystem in many other ways including the water cycle, nutrient cycle, or carbon fixation. On that account, (not just) European temperate coniferous forests may become endangered ecosystems. Our study was performed in the unmanaged zone of the Krkonoše Mountains National Park in the northern part of the Czech Republic where the natural spreading of bark beetle is slow and, therefore, allow us to continuously monitor the infested trees that are, in contrast to managed forests, not being removed. The aim of this work is to evaluate possibilities of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-mounted low-cost RGB and modified near-infrared sensors for detection of different stages of infested trees at the individual level, using a retrospective time series for recognition of still green but already infested trees (so-called green attack). A mosaic was created from the UAV imagery, radiometrically calibrated for surface reflectance, and five vegetation indices were calculated; the reference data about the stage of bark beetle infestation was obtained through a combination of field survey and visual interpretation of an orthomosaic. The differences of vegetation indices between infested and healthy trees over four time points were statistically evaluated and classified using the Maximum Likelihood classifier. Achieved results confirm our assumptions that it is possible to use a low-cost UAV-based sensor for detection of various stages of bark beetle infestation across seasons; with increasing time after infection, distinguishing infested trees from healthy ones grows easier. The best performance was achieved by the Greenness Index with overall accuracy of 78%–96% across the time periods. The performance of the indices based on near-infrared band was lower.

This article presents unmanned aerial system (UAS)-based photogrammetry as an efficient method for the estimation of snow-field parameters, including snow depth, volume, and snow-covered area. Unlike similar studies employing UASs, this method benefits from the rapid development of compact, high-accuracy global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers. Our custom-built, multi-sensor system for UAS photogrammetry facilitates attaining centimeter- to decimeter-level object accuracy without deploying ground control points; this technique is generally known as direct georeferencing. The method was demonstrated at Mapa Republiky, a snow field located in the Krkonose, a mountain range in the Czech Republic. The location has attracted the interest of scientists due to its specific characteristics; multiple approaches to snow-field parameter estimation have thus been employed in that area to date. According to the results achieved within this study, the proposed method can be considered the optimum solution since it not only attains superior density and spatial object accuracy (approximately one decimeter) but also significantly reduces the data collection time and, above all, eliminates field work to markedly reduce the health risks associated with avalanches.

Mountain areas often hold special species communities, and they are high on the list of conservation concern. Global warming and changes in human land use, such as grazing pressure and afforestation, have been suggested to be major threats for biodiversity in the mountain areas, affecting species abundance and causing distribution shifts towards mountaintops. Population shifts towards poles and mountaintops have been documented in several areas, indicating that climate change is one of the key drivers of species' distribution changes. Despite the high conservation concern, relatively little is known about the population trends of species in mountain areas due to low accessibility and difficult working conditions. Thanks to the recent improvement of bird monitoring schemes around Europe, we can here report a first account of population trends of 44 bird species from four major European mountain regions: Fennoscandia, UK upland, south-western (Iberia) and south-central mountains (Alps), covering 12 countries. Overall, the mountain bird species declined significantly (-7%) during 2002-2014, which is similar to the declining rate in common birds in Europe during the same period. Mountain specialists showed a significant -10% decline in population numbers. The slope for mountain generalists was also negative, but not significantly so. The slopes of specialists and generalists did not differ from each other. Fennoscandian and Iberian populations were on average declining, while in United Kingdom and Alps, trends were nonsignificant. Temperature change or migratory behaviour was not significantly associated with regional population trends of species. Alpine habitats are highly vulnerable to climate change, and this is certainly one of the main drivers of mountain bird population trends. However, observed declines can also be partly linked with local land use practices. More efforts should be undertaken to identify the causes of decline and to increase conservation efforts for these populations.

The paper is focused on an investigation of the cause of different processing behaviors of the PVC granules of one batch delivered by different transport modes (air, shipping). While airborne transported granules (delivery time approximately 14 days) did not show any production problems, the surface of the final cables produced from granules transported by shipping (delivery time approximately 2 months) contains in some cases a surface defect in the form of swelling. Both samples of granules were analyzed using methods of structural analysis to investigate mutual differences between samples. Simultaneous Thermal Analysis (STA), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) were used for the samples comparison. As an additional test, analysis of dissolved gases evolved during thermal decomposition of the sample from shipping transport was recorded. Results of the performed analyses showed different behavior of tested samples. Typical decomposition behavior of PVC corresponds especially to air transport granules while the sample transported by shipping contained an additional weight reduction at around 200 °C. The composition of evolved gases at this temperature contains only water and carbon dioxide, which are probably the decomposition products of hydrotalcite contained in the sample of PVC granule, whose structure could contain up to 12 % of the water of crystallization. The obtained results demonstrated that probable cause of the different processing behavior of samples represents the higher content of the water of crystallization in granules transported by shipping.

The stabilisation energies of the crystal structures of 1,3-dithiole-2-thione-4-carboxyclic acid···I2 and DABCO···I2 complexes determined by the CCSD(T)/CBS method are very large and exceed 8 and 15 kcal mol(-1), respectively. The DFT-D method (B97-D3/def2-QZVP) strongly overestimates these stabilisation energies, which support the well-known fact that the DFT-D method is not very applicable to the study of charge-transfer complexes. On the other hand, the M06-2X/def2-QZVP method provides surprisingly reliable energies. A DFT-SAPT analysis has shown that a substantial stabilisation of these complexes arises from the charge-transfer energy included in the induction energy and that the respective induction energy is much larger than that of other non-covalently bound complexes. The total stabilisation energies of the complexes mentioned as well as of those where iodine has been replaced by lighter halogens (Br2 and Cl2) or by hetero systems (IF, ICH3, N2) correlate well with the magnitude of the σ-hole (Vs,max value) as well as with the LUMO energy. The nature of the stabilisation of all complexes between both electron donors and X2 (X = I, Br, Cl, N) systems is explained by the magnitude of the σ-hole but surprisingly also by the values of the electric quadrupole moment of these systems. Evidently, the nature of the stabilisation of halogen-bonded complexes between electron donors and systems where the first non-zero electric multipole moment is the quadrupole moment can be explained not only by the recently introduced concept of the σ-hole but also by the classical concept of electric quadrupole moments.