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The aim is to gather pollen sequences and derive from them synthetic information on past species distribution and Holocene vegetation history. Lonicera nigra was selected as a model taxa. The phylogeographic hypothesis that its Alpine and Carpathian populations survived the LGM in separate refugia is supported only by the Late-Glacial record. This shrub migrated rapidly from southern to central Europe during the warm oscilations of the Late Glacial. The synthesis of vegetation history was produced by applying the REVEALS model, which can filter out following factors influencing the relationship between pollen and vegetation: pollen taphonomy, pollen productivity and pollen dispersal. It was necessary to calculate and test those parameters, so the goals were partly methodical. Pollen productivity estimates are calculated within the Relevant Source Area of Pollen, which is influenced by vegetation structure. Subsequent validation of those values in the area of the REVEALS model 10000 km2 and selection of additional values for lacking taxa created the best set of parameters for the study area. The source fossil dataset for purposes of this synthesis is the newly developed Czech Quaternary Pollen database (PALYCZ). Non-direct multivariate analysis of pollen percentages including all taxa revealed a similarity...

Lake Ohrid, the oldest lake in Europe, is an ideal place to study the response of the terrestrial ecosystems to many climatic and environmental changes during the Quaternary. It is also a useful source of information regarding the interactions between man and environment during the Holocene - this applies especially to the Late Bronze Age period and the beginning of the Iron Age, when there were profound changes in landscape management and when lakeside settlements were suddenly abandoned, which is also evident in the palaeobotanical record. This work summarizes the existing knowledge on this issue and presents various possibilities for studying paleoenvironmental development in this area. Key words: Holocene - Lake Ohrid - paleoenvironmental reconstruction - settlement - Bronze Age

This thesis focuses on the main study methods of primary succession. It compares their advantages and disadvantages, the scales of usage and the outputs they bring. Due to the duration of a succession development (in hundreds of years), indirect approach - space-for- time substitution using chronosequences (sites that differ only in age and make up succession series) is often used instead of direct study methods. Breach of the the critical assumption that all sites follow the same trajectory may lead to false conclusions about the successional development. This thesis presents examples showing this problem, ways to prevent it and offers an alternative method - pollen analysis. Pollen analysis is on average used for larger spatial and temporal scales but partially overlaps scales of space-for-time substitution. The thesis presents biases of pollen analysis and ways how to solve/limit them and introduces abandoned, partially flooded quarries as a suitable environment for the use of this method to study succession inferred from rapidly growing limnic sediment.

This thesis summarizes the basic knowledge about the dynamics of spruce forests in Europe on Holocene scale. It presents an overview of glacial refugia during the last glacial maximum and migration routes of spruce expansion to Europe. It also presents the basic facts about disturbancy dynamics and differences in disturbancy dynamics of northern and central Europe. In the last part, I have listed the basic palaeoecological methods that help in the study of spruce disturbances. Keywords: Norway spruce, Holocene, disturbance, dynamics, paleoecological methods

Pollen spectra found in sediments enable the research of quantitative changes in vegetation composition in the past. The fact is conditioned upon assumption of unchangeable linear relationship between abundance of pollen and the vegetation that is responsible for its production. Calibration of this relationship is experimentally performed on modern pollen samples and current vegetation. Relative pollen produktivity etimates (PPEs) represents basic parameters for the conversion of proportional pollen data into the vegetational ones. Their knowledge is indispensible for the quantitative vegetation restoration and for the simulating of the processes of pollen dispersion and deposition. PPEs estimation is performed by ERV model which corrects nonlinear relationship of proportional pollen and vegetation data back to the linear relationship. ERV model estimates PPEs values together with values of pollen background by maximum likelihood method. Knowledge of PPEs of main tree species is crucial for the understanding of processes which takes place on the level of landscape scale. Model area of Křivoklátsko was selected due to its high forest coverage and tree diversity. Twenty-four localities were chosen upon stratified random selection. Moss polsters containing modern pollen loading were taken and detailed...

Quantitative reconstruction of vegetation from fossil pollen data makes is possible to learn about historical development of the flora of a particular area and, thus, to a certain degree about the climate changes as well. Parameters (the so-called pollen productivities) needed in order to convert the pollen data into the vegetation data can be acquired by calibration from modern samples. The constancy of these parameters in time is assumed on the basis of the principle of uniformitarianism. Due to climatic conditions, however, pollen productivities are not constant in space and must be estimated for each region separately. The pollen and vegetation percentage data can be used to carry out relative pollen productivity estimates (PPE). The relative pollen productivities are related to a reference taxon, which has a value of 1 and vegetation abundance expressed by content units. Relative pollen productivities are estimated by means of the so-called ERV models. Before entering the ERV models, the vegetation data must be weighed by the distance in order to take into account the fact that the more remote plants contribute to the sample with a smaller quantity of pollen than the nearer ones. It is the Prentice-Sugita model of pollen dispersion ant disposition that is currently the most appropriate...