Rola zmian klimatu, działalności człowieka i tektoniki w późnoczwartorzędowej ewolucji doliny Dniestru na przedpolu Wschodnich Karpat
The role of climate change, human impact and tectonics in the late Quaternary evolution of the Dniester River Valley in the eastern Carpathian

Summary/Abstract: Research in the valleys of Dniester and Stryj Rivers documents the occurrence of Vistulian terrace and 3–4 terraces within the floodplain as well as several alluvial fills within the lowest of these terraces, 4–6 m high. Together with alluvial fills dated to the 15 000–16 000 BP, 12 000– 11 000 BP, Younger Dryas, 8700–8000 BP, 5600–5400 BP, 3500–3000 BP, 2200–1700 BP, and also 5th-6th century AD, are distinguished fluvial sediments from the 10th-12th, 14th-16th and the last 150–200 years. Flood phases distinguished in the Upper Dniester basin correlate well with previously established phases of enhanced fluvial activity in the valleys of Upper Vistula, the Wisłoka, Wisłok and San in the Western Carpathian Foreland. In the Late Vistulian and older Holocene the phases of increase fluvial accumulation were exclusively connected with more humid and cold climatic phases. Records of human impact in the Dniester valley date back to the Neolithic and later periods and comprise alluvia reflecting floods marked by changes of river channels and acceleration of deposition of overbank facies (Fig. 11). Deterioration of climate in the end of the Atlantic and at the beginning of the Subboreal periods (5400–5000 BP) with considerable deforestation and plant cultivation, linked with tribes of the Funnel Beaker cultures, caused soil erosion and sedimentation alluvial sands over the peat dated at 5400 BP in the Upper Dniester Basin. The pastoral people of the Corded Ware culture (4400–3800 BP) exploited mainly uplands where are a great number of barrows. The presence of rare pollen of Cereals in Ćwitowa and Majnycz suggest that the soil cultivation was not totally excluded on the river terraces. The climate during this period was rather wet, as indicated by rise of the ground water level at Majnycz and Ćwitowa profiles. Changes of river channels and increase of overbank deposition in the Dniester and Stryj valleys falls on the period 3500–3000 BP. In this time the people of the Mierzanowice and Trzciniec culture appeared. It left its traces on the low terrace in Majnycz, and on the high terrace in Bukačivce and Tenetniki in the Dniester valley. The Roman Period was a time of enhanced human activity and flood deposition proved by subfossil tree trunks dated at 2200– 1700 BP. In the Migration Period (5th-6th centuries) regression of agriculture, reforestation and increase in frequency of floods is observed. This time is represented by insert of the alluvia with subfossil trunks within the Strvjaž and Stryj terraces. Flood phases 10th-12th centuries and 14th-16th centuries record growing human activity in the Carpathians. The progressing deforestation in the 10th-12th centuries is evidenced by palinological analyses of peat-bogs and organic sediments overlain by overbank sediments in the Upper Dniester Basin (Harmata, Kalinowicz 2006), as well as overbank sediments of the Stryj river valley dated at 990–1080 BP in the Žydačiv Dače profile.

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