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Sources and causes of spread of newly introduced plant species
Schmiedlová, Barbora ; Münzbergová, Zuzana (advisor) ; Čuda, Jan (referee)
The bachelor's thesis is written in the form of a literature review and deals with factors that affect the current global spread of plants into new areas, and their possible invasiveness in the new areas. The aim is to verify the hypothesis that one of the main causes of the spread of new plant species (the last 50 years aprox.) to new areas could be climate change. The introductory part of the thesis explains the basic concepts (native versus non-native species, invasive species, temporarily introduced species, etc.) and lists the main factors that affect the global distribution of non-native plant species. The following is a description of the issue of current global change, focusing primarily on climate change and what impact it may have on the spread of plant species. The last part of the work focuses on newly introduced non-native plant species and on the factors that influence their global distribution the most, in comparison with plant species introduced a long time ago (more than 50 years ago). It was found that climate change does have a significant impact on the shift of the area of distribution of newly introduced plant species, especially to extreme areas (higher altitude etc.). Several selected non-native plant species, in which a shift in the range of distribution due to climate...
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The impact of coronavirus crisis on the media coverage of climate change topic in Czech daily newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes
Hlinka, Ivan ; Osvaldová, Barbora (advisor) ; Zunová, Anna (referee)
The coronavirus crisis has affected the way of life on the planet. Due to the speed and intensity with which it has spread, it earned a lot of media attention. This space was given to it at the expense of other, less attractive topics. The bachelor's thesis focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on media coverage of climate change. Using the quantitative content analysis, relevant articles from 2019 and 2020 were examined. The first chapters represent the theoretical basis and insight into the issue. They deal with climate change and climate extremes, the coronavirus crisis, including its course in the Czech Republic, and describe the basic concepts of media theory that are necessary for a proper understanding of the topic of this thesis. The methodology chapter sets out the objectives of this work, research questions, and procedures. The last two chapters present the obtained data and answers to the research questions. The result of the analysis was that the coronavirus crisis negatively affected the articles dealing with the topic of climate change. In absolute numbers, there was a decrease in almost all examined categories. The only exception was the average length of the articles, which increased by 7.8%. In 2020, the number of published relevant articles decreased by 41.5%...
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Ecological trends in xylem production of woody plants
Tichý, Jan ; Treml, Václav (advisor) ; Schnablová, Renata (referee)
Xylogenesis (wood formation) is one of the most important biological processes on Earth. Woody plants store atmospheric carbon during this process and are thus an essential player in the carbon cycle, and therefore in the interactions of the biosphere and the Earth's climate system. The course of xylogenesis is affected by many factors, the main factors include photoperiod, temperature and water availability. The significance and impact of individual factors on xylogenesis changes with time and place on Earth. The cambium, which by its division forms wood, enters the dormant and active phase during the year. As part of the changes in the activity of the cambium, rings are formed from which it is possible to read the conditions in which the tree was located during the formation of the given tree ring. This characteristic feature of wood is the subject of many studies and can be used to investigate the effects of climate change on xylogenesis.
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Aviation impact on global warming
Štarha, Adam ; Juračka, Jaroslav (referee) ; Zikmund, Pavel (advisor)
This bachelor‘s thesis deals with the issue of ever-increasing aviation emissions. It describes where greenhouse gases appear and what their excessive amount causes. Furthermore, this work deals with the comparison of emissions of individual modes of transport and the comparison of the benefits of individual modes of transport, especially air transport, through subsidies and tax relief in the EU.
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The Effect of Scientific Argumentation on Climate Activism on Twitter
Bicanová, Jana ; Urban, Jan (advisor) ; Soukup, Petr (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to test the main principle of the Gateway Belief Model (GBM) on Twitter data, as suggested and experimentally validated by other authors. van der Linden et al. (2015 and 2019). The GBM predicts that the perception of scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change increases the probability of support for public action against or in favor of the mitigation of the climate change. In this work I analyse a random sample of 115,940,434 tweets gathered over the course of the first six months of 2020. The big data is pre-processed using unsupervised (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) and supervised (Naïve Bayes Classifier) machine learning algorithms in order to generate keywords for filtering environmentally themed tweets and to classify either absence or presence of the climate activism. Within the dataset, 5,857 environmentally themed tweets were detected, finding that only 94 out of them were explicitly linked to the message of scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change. The harvested dataset proved to be unsuitable for testing the GBM, not only because of the small number of tweets which contain the message about 97 % of climatologists reaching the consensus, but also because the majority of these tweets deny the consensus and therefore, do not represent a...
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Determination of carbon footprint in relation to the production unit of the budget indicator
Šebestová, Michaela ; Kocourková, Gabriela (referee) ; Krejza, Zdeněk (advisor)
The presented diploma thesis analyses the possibilities of determining the carbon footprint in relation to the production unit of the budget indicator. The theoretical part of the thesis describes the basic concepts associated with the carbon footprint and construction industry. The aim of this thesis is to quantify the carbon footprint of construction process, mainly during the production phase, and to compare the carbon footprint of objects of different production technology. The main output is the determination of an average carbon footprint converted to a unit of the budget indicator.
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Methods of CO2 separation from air, ways of its use and long-term storage
Kober, Ondřej ; Baláš, Marek (referee) ; Škorpík, Jiří (advisor)
Combustion of fossil fuels creates greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. The most important of these gases is carbon dioxide. Although it occurs naturally in the atmosphere, human emissions upset the balance of various natural processes. The aim of this bachelor’s thesis is to conduct a background research in the field of carbon dioxide capture, storage and utilization. The thesis also describes the role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, its cycle and human influence on carbon dioxide concentration.
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Fossil Fuels Lobby and Climate Change: Influencing the Discourse in Politics and Media
Balková, Tereza ; Sehnálková, Jana (advisor) ; Fiřtová, Magdalena (referee)
Climate change denial is a widely spread phenomenon in the United States that has for decades shaped the country's response to the numerous environmental challenges it has been facing. This thesis deals with the role of the American fossil fuels lobby in the analyzed matter, as it constituted the main force behind its rise. The main goal of the thesis is to prove that the success of the climate change denial orchestrated by the fossil fuels industry was enabled by its ties to the political establishment. Moreover, it argues that this was done by using professionally drafted strategies, which turned a once-widely-accepted fact - backed by a scientific consensus - into a matter of debate, opinion, politics, ideology, and identity. In order to do that, the thesis firstly covers the historical development of the climate debate in the United Sates. It looks at the major milestones in the country's approach in dealing with the problem of the environment as well as the emergence of the climate change denial campaign itself. Secondly, it analyzes the various connections between U.S. politics, special interests, and climate science from the 1970s until the end of the George W. Bush Administration. Next, it introduces the specific tactics and methods employed by the climate change denial campaign. Moreover,...
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European catfish (Silurus glanis, Linneus 1758): Is the global warming the main reason of increasing of catches of the largest freshwater predator in Europe?
Bakeš, Michal ; Čech, Martin (advisor) ; Černý, Martin (referee)
European catfish (Silurus glanis, Linneus 1758) is our only fish which amount of catch is growing in our country in the last thirty years. The main goal of my work is to find out if global warming is essential for increasing catch of catfish, or whether rising temperatures are marginal, and the main reason is growing focus of fishermen on catfish. This thesis summarized knowledge about effect of global warming on ecosystems mainly on freshwater bodies that seem to be the most influenceable among terrestric ones. The enlarging populations of catfish in countries of south Europe (e.g. Spain, Italy) where catfish was recently introduced can be explained by the fact that warm water is suitable for catfish. However, some socioeconomic studies carried out in the Czech Republic as well as abroad clearly demonstrate that popularity of catching of catfish increases in time. I verified this idea by the results of my questionnaire survey, where 82 % of respondents approved that the popularity of catfish among fishermen is highest in the last decade. Based on the evidence we can say that increasing temperatures has a positive effect on the metapopulation of catfish in the Czech Republic, but this influence seems to be marginal. The main reason for still increasing catch is very likely the change of preferences...
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