Zsófia Ruszkiczay-Rüdiger

Fluvial and aeolian landscape evolution in Hungary - Results of the last 20 years research

Present study provides a review of the latest results on fluvial and aeolian landscape evolution in Hungary achieved by our team during the last 20 years. – The Hungarian river terrace system and its chronology was described with special emphasise on the novel threshold concept. A revised terrace system was created by the compilation of novel terrace chronology and MIS data. Evolution of river terraces was not only governed by climatic factors but tectonic ones too. Incision rate of the Danube, and uplift rate of the Transdanubian Range (TR) was around 0.1-0.3 mm/a in the marginal zones of the TR (mostly based on the published U-series data) and was above 1 mm/a in its axial zone (based on 3 He exposure age dating of strath terraces). – According to a detailed geomorphological investigation of the different channel-planform morphologies in the Middle Tisza region and Sajo-Hernad alluvial fan, six phases of river pattern change and four incision periods were detected during the last 20,000 years. – Wind polished rock surfaces dated by in situ produced cosmogenic 10 Be suggest that deflation was active in Hungary as early as 1.5 Ma ago. According to these exposure age data, Pleistocene denudation rate of the study area (Balaton Highland) was 40-80 m/Ma. – In sand covered areas the alternations of wind-blown layers and buried fossil soils provide information about climate and environment changes. In this study, periods of sand movement were mostly determined by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating methods and five aeolian sand accumulation periods were recognised during the last 25 000 years. – A new loess stratigraphical view was elaborated using the most recent dating methods (luminescence, AAR). The lower part of Mende Upper (MF 1-2 ) pedokomplex is suggested to represent the last interglacial period (MIS 5e). During the last interglacial/glacial period (MIS 5 - MIS 2) several soil-forming periods existed but the preservation of these paleosoils is variable depending on their paleogeomorphological position.

Conservation tillage vs. conventional tillage: long-term effects on yields in continental, sub-humid Central Europe, Hungary

The present study reports novel data concerning Conservation Tillage (CT) in the continental sub-humid climate zone in Central Europe (Hungary), an area which has been mostly neglected in the course of previous CT studies. The results of a 10-year (2003–2013) comparative study of mouldboard ploughing tillage (PT) and CT (no inversion, using a reduced number of tillage operations and leaving min. 30% crop residues on the soil surface) types are reported. Our extensive monitoring system has provided new and detailed information concerning technologies and yields both from the first, transitional period and, over the following years, of adapted technology. Our results suggest that tillage type was a more important factor in the question of yields than either the highly variable climate of the studied years, or the diverse slope conditions of the plots. During the first three years of technological changeover to CT (2003–2006), a decrease of 8.7% was measured, respective to PT. However, the next seven years (2007–2013) brought a 12.7% increase of CT yields. Our study revealed key factors in the initial reduction of crops during the technological change, and may accordingly serve as a guideline for the shortening or avoidance of decline in the transitional period.

(Un)Resolved contradictions in the Late Pleistocene glacial chronology of the Southern Carpathians - new samples and recalculated cosmogenic radionuclide age estimates

Application of cosmogenic nuclides in the study of Quaternary glaciations has increased rapidly during the last decade owing to the previous absence of direct dating methods of glacial landforms and sediments. Although several hundred publications have already been released on exposure age dating of glacial landforms worldwide, very few studies targeted the Carpathians so far (Kuhlemann et al, 2013a; Makos et al., 2014; Reuther et al, 2004, 2007; Rinterknecht et al. 2012). There are many unresolved or contradictory issues regarding the glacial chronology of the Romanian Carpathians. Recently, some attempts have been made to develop an improved temporal framework for the glaciations of the region using cosmogenic 10 Be dating (Reuther et al. 2004, 2007, Kuhlemann et al. 2013a). However, these studies made the picture even more confusing because the local last glacial maximum, for instance, apparently occurred in asynchronous timing compared to each other and also to other dated glacial events in Europe (Hughes et al, 2013). This situation is even more interesting if we take into account that the local glacial maximum tends to agree with the global LGM derived from the Eastern Balkans (Kuhlemann et al. 2013b), while the penultimate glaciation seems to significantly overtake the LGM advance over the Western Balkans (Hughes et al. 2011). The primary candidate reasons to resolve these discrepancies are methodological, e.g. insufficient number of samples (one sample/landform) ignoring geological scatter of the data and the application of different half-lives, production rates and scaling schemes during the calculation of exposure ages. Systematic methodological uncertainties in computing exposure ages from measured nuclide concentrations have a significant impact on the conclusions concerning correlations of exposure-dated glacier chronologies with millennial scale climate changes (Balco, 2011). The changes in glacial timing generated by only using the most recent constants for the exposure age calculations has not been considered in the most recent review on the timing of the LGM (Hughes et al., 2013). Main objective of our study is to utilize the potential offered by the cosmogenic in situ produced 10 Be dating to disentangle the contradictions in the available Southern Carpathian Late Pleistocene glacial chronology (Kuhlemann et al, 2013a; Reuther et al, 2004, 2007). We recalculate 10 Be data published by Reuther et al. (2007) in accordance with the new half-life and production rate of 10 Be. Besides, a new sample set has been collected to establish a precise chronological framework supported by in-situ exposure dating of several additional moraine generations.