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Tree-ring chronologies of Norway-spruce on west-east longitudinal gradient in the mountain ranges of central Europe
Ponocná, Tereza ; Treml, Václav (advisor) ; Kolář, Tomáš (referee) ; Vejpustková, Monika (referee)
The Earth's climate system has recently experienced substantial warming which likely impacts temperature-limited communities close to their distribution margins. The alpine treeline ecotone represents upper distributional limit of montane/subalpine forests. This biogeographic boundary relies mainly on decreasing temperature with increasing elevation. Surprisingly the response of treeline ecotone to ongoing warming has varied a lot and the reasons of this variability are poorly understood. The aim of this dissertation thesis is the assessment of growth trends and tree ring response of Norway spruce (Picea abies[L.] Karst.) to climatic oscillations at treelines and montane forests of East-Central Europe. This dissertation deals with both inter-regional and intra-regional (aspect, elevation) variability of tree growth. The presented results are based on an extensive data set of growth curves for almost 1400 trees. All study sites revealed close relationship between tree ring widths and growing season temperatures as well as the temperatures of October preceding to ring formation season. The main site-dependent differences in growth trends and temperature responses were attributed to elevation, the effect of aspect was relatively less significant. At treelines between the Krkonoše Mts. and Nízké Tatry...
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Legal protection of the climate system of Earth in the "post-Kyoto" period
Němeček, Michal ; Žákovská, Karolina (advisor) ; Sobotka, Michal (referee)
This diploma thesis focuses on the phenomenon of global climate change from the perspective of climate change law. The thesis defines the phenomenon in legal terms and deals with problems it brings to the environment and the world population. Its major part is dedicated to the international law of climate change, including all past Conferences of the Parties (COP) and their outcomes together with the most important treaties - United Nations Framework Convention in terms of Kyoto Protocol and the unsuccessful Doha Amendment. The Paris Agreement, which is the most recent international treaty, already ratified by 160 countries, could be a game changer in terms of effectivity in both climate change mitigation and adaptation legislation as well as much needed international solution. This thesis also focuses on the EU law of climate change, especially on the progress and future of Emissions Trading System and other legislation. Not only is the EU now more focused on the adaptation legislation, this is an important topic also for the Czech Republic. Especially when many Czech laws stem from EU regulations, there is still a great potential in the adaptation legislation and major progress is expected in the near future. Key words Climate change, Paris Agreement, emissions allowances, COP
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Cooperation on Climate Change as a Pillar of the Relationship Between the United States and China
Jandus, Lukáš ; Hornát, Jan (advisor) ; Bečka, Jan (referee)
Cooperation on climate change in the second term of president Obama showed to have potential for improvement of the relationship between the United States and China. This paper analyses how the climate change cooperation developed and concludes that under right circumstances it has positive influence on the bilateral relationship. In order to make the improvement more lasting, the climate change cooperation should take into account national security considerations, specifically the parties should collaborate and jointly exercise on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.
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Energy and Environment in the View of Law
Pokorný, Jiří ; Damohorský, Milan (advisor) ; Smolek, Martin (referee) ; Stejskal, Vojtěch (referee)
The relationships among energetics, environment and associated climatic changes is beginning to be a subject of a complex interest of not just science but also politics and law. The reason for this is the fact that we are now at a breaking point of the development of mankind and our future steps will significantly influence its path. To obtain the energy man cannot live without, we frequently use fossil fuels, producing greenhouse gases that are warming our planet. This situation needs to change. We either find a sustainable solution or we will cause a catastrophe. The energetics must not be the cause, it has to be the solution as well. One of possible solutions for this problem is the law. It is not a stand-alone solution but it is a fundamental one nonetheless. To come up with an effective solution, a large-scale cooperation is necessary in politics, science, economics and in society as well - and there is not much time to come up with it. Keywords: energetics, environment, climate change
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Frequency and trend analysis of rain-on-snow events at selected meteorological stations in the Czech Rebublic
Kakalejčík, Matej ; Jeníček, Michal (advisor) ; Blahušiaková, Andrea (referee)
Rain-on-snow events represent a natural hydro-meteorological phenomenon and their occurrence is often associated with floods. Due to the climate change occurrence, rain-on snow events are also changing. The main goal of diploma thesis is to define spatial and temporal occurrence of rain-on-snow events at 16 selected meteorological stations in the Czech Republic between the years 1966-2012. Spatial occurrence of rain-on-snow events is expressed by number of events per meteorological station. Final number of events varies widely even between the stations with similar altitude. Stations with the highest frequency of rain-on-snow events are located in Jizerské hory between 675 and 780 m a.s.l. Temporal occurrence of rain- on-snow events is expressed by number of events per year and month respectively. Time series of rain-on-snow events were analysed by statistical trends to gain information about changes in occurrence over time. Most of the stations proved no statistically significant trend. There was a trend detected only at four out of 16 stations. Three meteorological stations showed a rising trend, whereas one station signalled a decreasing trend. More complex results were produced by the trend analysis of monthly time series of rain-on snow events. Nine stations yielded at least one month with a...
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Hydrological Drought in Headwaters of Šumava Mountain
Skála, Vít ; Janský, Bohumír (advisor) ; Kocum, Jan (referee)
This master thesis if focused on the phenomenon of hydrological drought in the Šumava (Bohemian/Black Forrest) region. Hydrological drought is defined on seven hydrological stations (Modrava (CZ), Rejštějn (CZ), Sušice (CZ), Zwiesel (DE), Teisnach (DE), Chamerau (DE), Kalteneck (DE)) during period 1931-1937 and 1949-2014. The aim is in finding suitable hydrological dought indexes and other methods and apply them od the data. Results are compared each other and also are compared with studies that were proceed in non-mountainous region. For hydrological drought evaluation the threshold concept and method according Gumbel 1963 were used and deficite volumes were calculated. Seasonality graphs and graphs for nuber of drought days in hydrological years were constructed, For trends defining, Mann.Kendall and Hisch-Slack tests were used. Hydrological drought sesonality is different on german and czech side, it means effect of exposition towards southwest winds. Hydrological drought is concetrated in autumn at german stations and in winter on czech stations. Number of drought episodes decreases with decreasing elevation. There were found significant decreasing trends in drought episodes occurance in time. Monthly trends aren't so clear. On czech side there is significant decreasing trend in winter months,...
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TREELINE DYNAMIC IN THE MT. KRALICKÝ SNĚŽNÍK
Kolář, Václav ; Treml, Václav (advisor) ; Šenfelder, Martin (referee)
Treeline dynamic in the Mt. Kralický Sněžník Abstract Changes in treeline positions have been recorded both in the mountains of Central Europe and worldwide. The treeline upward shifts have been recently influenced particularly by rising temperature and reduced human impacts in the highest parts of the mountains. The goal of this thesis is to evaluate dynamics of treeline in the Mt. Kralický Sněžník and to determine influencing factors. Dendrochronological methods were employed to determine age structure of spruce across the ecotone and the analysis of aerial images was used to identify changes of spruce coverage between 1936 and 2014. I found that tree age is decreasing with increasing elevation - an evidence of advancing treeline. Treeline upward advance indicated by a gradual densification of spruce stands was also detected from aerial images. Seedling abundance is negatively affected by dense mats of blueberry in the upper part of ecotone. Mortality of spruce is rising with increasing elevation,which indicates the negative influence of extreme climatic conditions in the uppermost parts of ecotone. Age structures and aerial images show that the treeline advance in the Mt. Kralický Sněžník was caused by a combination of land abandonment at the end of 19th century supplemented by afforestation in the lower...
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Role of phenotypic plasticity, genetic and epigenetic differentiation in ecophysiological traits of Festuca rubra L. in response to climate change
Koláříková, Veronika ; Münzbergová, Zuzana (advisor) ; Schnablová, Renata (referee)
Understanding the ability of species to respond to climate change is essential for prediction of their future distribution. When migration is not adequate, reaction via phenotypic plasticity and/or genetic/epigenetic adaptation is necessary. The main aim of this study is to determine mechanisms of response to climate change in dominant grass species Festuca rubra. The study used reciprocal transplant experiment with growth chambers simulating different climatic conditions. Original localities in western Norway represent factorially crossed gradients of temperatures and precipitations, thus it was possible to study the effect of temperature and moisture separately as well as combined. In first part of the experiment, plastic responses were separated from genetic differentiation. To do this, plants with different genotypes from original localities were transplanted to growth chambers set to simulating temperature and moisture course in the four extreme localities (wettest and driest combined with warmest and coldest). After five months, ecophysiological photosynthetic-related traits were measured. These traits are important for species ability to adapt and maintain high fitness and thus they are essential for plants function. Specifically, it was net photosynthetic rate (PN), fluorescence of...
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Framing Climate Policies: Discourse Analysis of Carbon Pricing Debates in Canada and Australia
Davidová, Kateřina ; Hornát, Jan (advisor) ; Fiřtová, Magdalena (referee)
Framing Climate Policies: Discourse Analysis of Carbon Pricing Debates in Canada and Australia Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare the discourses of Stephen Harper and Tony Abbot during federal election campaigns where climate policies played an unusually important role (2008 in Canada and 2013 in Australia). The study builds on a hypothesis, that according to the post-materialist theory and the Environmental Kuznets Curve, such economically advanced, democratic countries as Canada and Australia should be at the vanguard of climate action. However, in reality they are some of the worst performers when it comes to tackling carbon emissions. Both Harper and Abbott publicly promised to put in serious efforts to tackle climate change. However, when the question of setting a national price on carbon came up for discussion during the above-mentioned election campaigns, they both not only opposed it, but even tried to discredit it by framing the whole debate in overwhelmingly negative terms. In order to uncover what kind of frames and other discursive strategies the two politicians used to shape the debate, critical discourse analysis was applied to their public statements on the policy of carbon tax. Results of this analysis show that they used all of the frames that are typically associated...
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Europe 2020 strategy and its implementation by the Czech Republic
Křivanec, David ; Palíšková, Marcela (advisor) ; Stříteský, Marek (referee)
At the beginning of the Bachelor's Thesis, there is a description of the European union and its history after World War II, phases of the European integration and benefits it brings for the member states. Then the process of how the economic policy of the EU is directed and coordinated with the policy of each individual state. Furthermore, the Europe 2020 strategy, which has goal to create a competitive EU on the global market, is in detail described and five areas are defined: Employment, Poverty, Education, Research and development and Climate change and energy. Analysis itself focuses on the implementation of the national targets using secondary data and future analysis. Results of the analysis shows, that the Czech Republic is successfully fulfilling most of the targets. The recommendation for the private and public sector is to focus on employment of the socially excluded groups, education of the children in early, pre-school stage of life and overall support of young people and graduates. From a long-time point of view, these steps should maximize work potential and increase education of the population.
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