How can we identify past habitats—not just species—from fossil data? A team lead by our colleague Petra Hájková presents a new method linking plant macrofossils with vegetation data - FEVER index. 🌿 Code & data available! doi.org/10.1016/j.ge...

We were delighted to celebrate the launch of the new book Carpathian Forest-Steppe Meadows (in Czech) last Friday in the White Carpathian House of Nature. The book summarises results of our long-term research on the diversity and long-term development of these exceptionally species-rich ecosystems.

Exciting news: our colleague Lydie Dudová will be co-investigating the Czech–Austrian Lead Agency grant project Celts, Crops and Centralization, starting this October! 🎉 Looking forward to new insights into the lives and environment of these pre-Slavic communities – fieldwork is already underway!

Warm congratulations to our wonderful colleague Petra Hájková on reaching this special milestone! 🎉

These days, together with Hedvika Synková from the Department of Archaeology and Museology, Masaryk University, we're subsampling peat and chernozem-type soils in the lab for sedimentary ancient DNA analysis. Excited to see what the data reveal!

Most of our department joined ice-breaker of PalaeOpen 2025 meeting at the Botanical Garden of Charles University in Prague, including members of the organizing team and our new colleague Vojtěch Abraham (bottom right in the photo). A great evening with the international paleoscience community!

Looking forward to joining PalaeOpen 2025: Effective conservation starts with open scientific data, a meeting of the COST Action CA23116 – Open Palaeoecological Data: analysing the past, building foresight. Prague, July 4–6, 2025. 🔗 www.cost.eu/actions/CA23...

Open Palaeoecological Data - analysing the past building foresight

Restoring and managing nature during times of rapid environmental change requires knowledge of ecosystem response to climate and land use change on timescales of decades to millennia. Different palaeo...

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Have you ever seen a tall-herb rich steppe? These fascinating communities, with their mix of montane and steppic species, may resemble the cold glacial steppes of the past. We've just returned from fieldwork in the peri-Carpathian steppes of eastern Romania—full of flowers and scientific value.

That's us! Department of Paleoecology (IBOT CAS) is now on Bluesky. We’re passionate about reconstructing past ecosystems to understand the present & predict the future. We have experts in pollen, plant macroremains, charcoals, diatoms & modern vegetation. Follow us on @paleoibot.bsky.social