Czech Scientists Receive Principal Investigator of the Year Award
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S-At Earthwatch Institute's annual conference this past November, the organization honored two eminent Czech scientists as its "Principal Investigators of 2002." For 13 years, hydrologist Dr. Josef Krecek (Czech Technical University) and hydrobiologist Zuzana Horicka (Charles University) have directed enthusiastic Earthwatch teams in the Jizera Mountains, Czech Republic, tracking the recovery of forests, lakes, and streams from decades of air pollution, acid atmospheric deposition, and damaging commercial forestry practices. The Scientist of the Year Award recognizes these pioneering researchers' commitment, results, and interaction with Earthwatch volunteers.
As we enter into 2003, the UN declared International Year of Freshwater, we cannot think of a more fitting project and wonderful set of researchers to present this award to," said Earthwatch President Roger Bergen. In a world in which 40 percent of the human population lives in areas experiencing water scarcity, the work of Krecek and Horicka is particularly timely. The award also recognizes the UN-declared International Year of the Mountain (2002).
Although the government of the former Czechoslovakia had declared the Jizera Mountains both a Protected Landscape Region and a Protected Headwater Area, they were among the most heavily damaged by a combination of factors: sulfur emissions from soft-coal-burning power plants located at the intersection of the Czech Republic, former East Germany, and Poland; acid precipitation; extensive clear-cutting of forests; and erosion-producing methods of skidding timber. During the Soviet-era, this area became known as Europe's Black Triangle for its industrial pollution. By the late 1980s, two-thirds of the region's forests were heavily damaged or dying, and fish were long gone from headwater lakes and streams.
Krecek recognized the importance of these remote, rugged, and sparsely populated mountains for their water, timber, minerals, wildlife, and other resources. "Adverse changes in these areas," Krecek said, "can have dramatic effects on both the environmental and political stability of a nation." Watersheds of the Jizera Mountains supply a fifth of the Czech Republic (including Prague) with drinking water.
Krecek was eager to gather enough data to prompt a response to watershed problems in the Jizera Mountains. And that he and Horicka did with the help of almost 300 Earthwatch volunteers on 46 teams. When they first started working with Earthwatch volunteers in 1991, they discovered that the acid deposition exceeded critical loads for stands of Norway spruce, and spruce plantations. Forests were dying from a combination of stresses, especially from the acid rain.
Ever since, Earthwatch teams have seasonally sampled the headwater streams and lakes of the Jizera Mountains for chemical and biological clues to their recovery. Sulfate, they found, is still the dominant component of atmospheric deposition in the Jizera Mountains. The annual load varies from as little as 7.2 kg/ha in open fields to as much as 35.6 kg/ha under the canopy of mature spruce stands. Fog precipitation is both more acidic and sulfate-laden than is rain or snow and may "play a significant role in the acidification of mountain ecosystems," Krecek said.
A combination of environmental factors-both positive and negative-has promoted the recovery of Jizera Mountain headwaters. As many Soviet-era, coal-fired plants ceased production, and others operated with improved technology, the level of air pollution and sulfur deposition has dropped. Meanwhile, defoliation and intensive clear-cutting of spruce plantations in the Jizera Mountains has reduced leaf area and the canopy overall, allowing less air-borne acid to accumulate.
As a result of the headwaters' recovery, Krecek and his teams over the past six years have successfully reintroduced acid-tolerant brook trout (brook char, Salvelinus fontinalis) to three Jizera Mountain reservoirs. The forests will take much longer to restore, but the scientists' recommendations for more environmentally friendly forest practices have already been adopted and have led to an increase in biodiveristy. Specifically, Krecek and Horicka have promoted traditional logging methods with limited clear-cuts; using horses or cables to remove timber so as to leave peat soils intact; and reforestation that mimics mixed stands of native species
In accepting the award for both of them, Horicka said, "I wish it was Josef Krecek who received the Award from Roger Bergen's hands this night. For me the Earthwatch work is a fascination, but for him it is like his first child. It was he who once recognised - quite wisely - the danger in the ‘Black Triangle' of Europe, the most heavily damaged area of the European continent, and suggested possible methods of its inventory, conservation, and possible improvement."
From his years of working with Earthwatch, Krecek said he has learned, "how important it is to stimulate activities in former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe - to mobilise human resources as well as institutional dimensions to control, protect and, if possible, recover the fragile mountain environment." In part as a result of his work in watersheds of the Jizera Mountains, Krecek in 2000 was elected to serve a two-year term as chair of the European Forestry Commission/FAO Working Party on the Management of Mountain Watersheds.
The cash prize, said Krecek, will help in "our long-term plans to study the environmental effects of reforestation with native tree species on the hydrological regime" of the Jizera headwaters. "What has happened, and is happening, in the Jizera Mountains," said Horicka, "is a huge natural experiment, which might serve as an example of rehabilitation in Central and Eastern Europe." In light of the recent expansion of the European Union, Krecek and Horicka hope their work will inspire EU members to cooperate in efforts to revitalize the region's headwaters and watersheds.
For information on volunteering on the Mountain Waters of Bohemia, click here.
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