Landscape Development and Climate Change in Southwest Bulgaria (Pirin Mountains)

Landscape Development and Climate Change in Southwest Bulgaria aims to address some of the current limitations in our understanding of past Balkan climate and environment. High mountains and their ecosystems offer an outstanding opportunity for studies on the impact of climate change. The Balkan Mountains in Southeast Europe, situated at the transition between temperate and Mediterranean climate, are considered as very sensitive to historical and current global changes. The geoarchives lake sediment, peat and soil, long living trees and glaciers have been used to reconstruct the climatically-driven change of forest and treeline during the Holocene and the younger past. These processes are interrelated with complex ecological changes, as for example the seasonality of climate parameters. The landscape research approach with the analyses through multi-palaeo-geoecological proxies is new for the Balkans.

Preface   1 Geoarchives – why the view into the past? 1.1 Introduction and objectives 1.2 Reasons and scales for climate changes 1.3 Archives and methods   2 The Pirin Mountains as a model region 2.1 Location and Ecosystem Characteristics 2.2 Geology and Morphodynamic 2.3 Water in the Pirin Mountains 2.4 Soil and Biosphere 2.5 Pirin National Park – potentials and anthropogenic interference   3 Holocene climate and landscape chronology 3.1 Würm glaciation and Late-glacial development 3.2 Climate and vegetation during the Holocene 3.3 Outline of cultural-historical dynamics   4 Climate data and geo-archives of the younger past 4.1 Characterisation of contemporary local climate change 4.1.1 Introduction 4.1.2. Analysis of meteorological observations 4.1.3. Regional climate aspects 4.1.4. Climate change and climate trend 4.2 Pirin’s glacier features as climate indicator 4.2.1 Introduction 4.2.2 The recent glaciation of high mountains in southeastern Europe 4.2.3 Investigation methods and application to Snezhnika Glacieret 4.2.3 The response to climate change 4.3 The timberline ecotones as key 4.3.1 Introduction 4.3.2 Timberline characteristic of the northern Pirin study area 4.4 Dendroecology of Pinus heldreichii 4.4.1 Conifers as geoarchive 4.4.2 Methodological approach 4.4.3 Development of chronologies 4.4.4 Climate growth relation   5 Specifics of the regional climate and landscape history 5.1 Changes on millennial timescale 5.2 Climate development of the region during the Younger Modern History 5.3 The recent climate change   6 Conclusion and outlook   Indexes Abbreviations Geographical features (Pirin region) Latin plant and animal names Time periods Subjects