Factors controlling Mn and Zn contents in leaves of silver and downy birch in acidified soils of Central Europe and Norway.

In Central European mountain forests, foliar element concentrations (FECs) of manganese (Mn) in silver birch (Betula pendula Roth) are occasionally approximately 5000 mg kg and can represent stress for these plants. Factors controlling the Mn FECs in silver birch in Central Europe and downy birch (Betula pubescens Ehrh.) in Norway have not yet been fully deciphered.

Deciphering timing and rates of Central German Chernozem/Phaeozem formation through high resolution single-grain luminescence dating.

Chernozems/Phaeozems are important agricultural resources and have been intensively used for millennia. However, their origin and age are still controversial. In Europe, the westernmost widespread Chernozem/Phaeozem area is located in Central Germany.

Last glacial loess dynamics in the Southern Caucasus (NE-Armenia) and the phenomenon of missing loess deposition during MIS-2.

The Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 2 is considered the coldest, driest and stormiest period during the last Glacial-Interglacial cycle in large parts of Eurasia. This resulted from strongly decreased northern hemisphere temperature and related maximum extension of northern ice sheets that strongly reinforced large-scale circulation modes such as westerlies and East Asian Winter Monsoon driven by the Siberian High. Normally, this intensified circulation is reflected by maximum loess deposition in numerous loess regions spanning Europe and Asia.

Large-scale investigations of Neolithic settlement dynamics in Central Germany based on machine learning analysis: A case study from the Weiße Elster river catchment.

The paper investigates potentials and challenges during the interpretation of prehistoric settlement dynamics based on large archaeological datasets. Exemplarily, this is carried out using a database of 1365 Neolithic sites in the Weiße Elster river catchment in Central Germany located between the southernmost part of the Northern German Plain and the Central Uplands. The recorded sites are systematically pre-processed with regard to their chronology, functional interpretation and spatial delineation.

Hydro-sedimentary provenance analyses in the Weiße Elster catchment (Central Germany): The basic dataset.

This manuscript documents geological master data and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) data of a standardized 8*8 km sampling grid of the entire Weiße Elster catchment in Central Germany. Further, the manuscript documents XRF data of a refined 4*4 km sampling grid in the proximity of Salsitz floodplain transect as well as grain size data and XRF data of Salsitz SC40 core that was recovered from the Weiße Elster floodplain. The data provide opportunities for hydro-sedimentary provenance analyses as presented in the corresponding research article by Ballasus et al.

Overbank silt-clay deposition and intensive Neolithic land use in a Central European catchment - Coupled or decoupled?

Hydro-sedimentary processes such as soil erosion, sediment transport, deposition, and re-deposition influence the environmental evolution of floodplains, especially in loess-covered catchments. Holocene floodplain deposits are thus a source of information on previous hydro-sedimentary dynamics and land use in the catchment. Resulting from forest clearings in the catchment, the onset of overbank silt-clay deposition is considered as an initial and significant human-induced process affecting Central European floodplain evolution and ecosystems.