Forest growth in Europe shows diverging large regional trends.

Forests cover about one-third of Europe's surface and their growth is essential for climate protection through carbon sequestration and many other economic, environmental, and sociocultural ecosystem services. However, reports on how climate change affects forest growth are contradictory, even for same regions. We used 415 unique long-term experiments including 642 plots across Europe covering seven tree species and surveys from 1878 to 2016, and showed that on average forest growth strongly accelerated since the earliest surveys. Based on a subset of 189 plots in Scots pine (the most widespread tree species in Europe) and high-resolution climate data, we identified clear large-regional differences; growth is strongly increasing in Northern Europe and decreasing in the Southwest. A less pronounced increase, which is probably not mainly driven by climate, prevails on large areas of Western, Central and Eastern Europe. The identified regional growth trends suggest adaptive management on regional level for achieving climate-smart forests.

Social Factors as Major Determinants of Rural Development Variation for Predicting Epidemic Vulnerability: A Lesson for the Future.

There have been changes in social attitudes in recent years. These changes have been a consequence of a new societal view of the common good, which manifests itself in social responsibility for a clean and healthy environment. The outbreak and spread of the COVID-19 epidemic has highlighted the socio-spatial variation across regions and countries. The epidemic necessitated restrictive measures by state authorities. In the initial period in many countries, the actions of the authorities were identical throughout the country. This was mainly due to a lack of information about the differentiation of areas in relation to the epidemic risk. The aim of the research was to present a model for classifying rural areas taking into account vulnerability to epidemic threats. The model takes into account demographic, social, economic and spatial-environmental development factors. A total of 33 indicators based on public statistics that can be used to determine the area's vulnerability to epidemic threats were identified. The study showed that for Poland, 11 indicators are statistically significant to the developed classification model. The study found that social factors were vital in determining an area's vulnerability to epidemic threats. We include factors such as average number of persons per one apartment, village centers (number), events (number), number of people per facility (cultural center, community center, club, community hall), residents of nursing homes per 1000 inhabitants, and the number of children in pre-school education establishments per 1000 children aged 3-5 years. The research area was rural areas in Poland. The results of the classification and the methods used should be made available as a resource for crisis management. This will enable a better response to threats from other epidemics in the future, and will influence the remodeling of the environment and social behavior to reduce risks at this risk, which has a significant impact on sustainable development in rural areas.

Assessment of the Living Conditions in Polish and German Transborder Regions in the Context of Strengthening Territorial Cohesion in the European Union: Competitiveness or Complementation?

The European Union's regional policy aims to strengthen economic, social, and territorial cohesion and equal space development opportunities. It is an action linking UE that emphasises the problem of cohesion in the interregional context. The essence of territorial cohesion is the necessity to eliminate inequalities between the living conditions of the population. The concept of quality of life is ambiguous, multidimensional and interdisciplinary. This problem is of particular importance concerning border areas, i.e. the periphery of countries, which often adversely affects the population's standard of living. The article aimed to assess the living conditions and the direction of changes in those terms on the Polish-German border, an internal border of the EU (former Eastern Bloc countries). The analysis covered the years 2004-2019. The impact of the EU's regional development and cohesion policies for border areas (INTERREG) in improving the analysed regions' living conditions was also determined. The method of aggregation, standardised sums, was used in the analysis. The research showed that the level of living conditions of these border regions' population was spatially diversified, being more favourable on the German side. The analysed border regions had less favourable material and non-material living conditions than the countries' average value. Significant changes in the living conditions of border regions in the years 2004-2019 were established towards equalising the quality of life, which was influenced by the spatial policy of territorial cohesion. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11205-022-02889-7.

Determining and quantifying the historical traces of spatial land arrangements in rural landscapes of Central and Eastern Europe.

The article attempts to define and determine the intangible components of cultural heritage related to the spatial structure of land in a comprehensive way using computational methods. The components were quantified and a method of empirical evaluation of landscape durability was proposed for agricultural areas of significant cultural and historical value with an evident mosaic structure of fields, baulks, ponds, meadows, and forests. This method allows us to identify places more resistant to political transformation and those with greater cultural potential. The paper proposed an integrated approach to the measuring of the degree of preservation of spatial arrangements in the landscape based on a set of objects that describe the spatial land structure. The article classifies areas by the degree of preservation of rural spatial arrangements of land. The spatial analysis employed facilitated a synthetic quantification of the multi-criteria process. Three groups of factors were used: spatial assessment of land-cover type persistence (u), agricultural land structure persistence (w), and persistence of settlement buildings (z). The final results pinpointed areas in need of strategic intervention to sufficiently protect the rural cultural heritage, properly consider them in zoning planning, and ensure their sustainable development. The proposed tool can be used to monitor the degree of changes in the landscape layout structure when multiple time points are analysed as well.

Detecting the Severity of Socio-Spatial Conflicts Involving Wild Boars in the City Using Social Media Data.

The encroachment of wild boars into urban areas is a growing problem. The occurrence of wild boars in cities leads to conflict situations. Socio-spatial conflicts can escalate to a varied degree. Assessments of these conflicts can be performed by analyzing spatial data concerning the affected locations and wild boar behaviors. The collection of spatial data is a laborious and costly process that requires access to urban surveillance systems, in addition to regular analyses of intervention reports. A supporting method for assessing the risk of wild boar encroachment and socio-spatial conflict in cities was proposed in the present study. The developed approach relies on big data, namely, multimedia and descriptive data that are on social media. The proposed method was tested in the city of Olsztyn in Poland. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the applicability of data crowdsourced from a popular social networking site for determining the location and severity of conflicts. A photointerpretation method and the kernel density estimation (KDE) tool implemented in ArcGIS Desktop 10.7.1 software were applied in the study. The proposed approach fills a gap in the application of crowdsourcing data to identify types of socio-spatial conflicts involving wild boars in urban areas. Validation of the results with reports of calls to intervention services showed the high coverage of this approach and thus the usefulness of crowdsourcing data.